Hook
by SinisterApollo
Summary: Ichigo and co. go to Hueco Mundo to save Orihime. And since Keigo kind-of-sort-of knows about the whole Shinigami shebang, he's suddenly being stalked by jackbooted thugs in suits. And then accidentally gets recruited by them. ((Bleach/MCU) Formerly called Agent 147)
1. Chapter 1

There were very few things that Asano Keigo was a completely sure about in life.

Granted, his overwhelmingly charismatic (annoying), larger-than-life (dramatic), confident (cocky) personality would make anyone think his life choices were purposefully and solely his decisions, but they tended to overlook the fact that he was all but fifteen, and very little of those decisions were in Keigo's hands.

His parents were almost never at home, so technically, it wasn't his decision to loiter by the streets late in the evening, hoping to catch a friend to hang with. He just didn't want to be home alone.

Again, it wasn't his idea to befriend Kurosaki and Sado that one time when the duo somehow managed to take down an entire gang of senior kids. That one was on Mizuiro; of course, he would never complain about that. Meeting Ichigo and Chad might as well have been one of the Best Ideas Ever despite his initial, and very vocal, reluctance.

Not to mention, his sister was Mizuho for god's sake, so naturally, it was her way or the highway.

The point being, since Keigo only had, say, about three percent - three and a half on a particularly good day - control over his own life, it would suffice to conclude that he was usually a pretty damn apprehensive about things chucked his way, contrary to popular opinion. Covering his anxiety with a layer of devil-may-care brashness in front of the entire world though, was a can of worms he wasn't willing to open yet.

So.

Very few things he was sure about. Right.

First, was that Keigo was an Average Joe. And if there existed an infinite number of alternate universes (so he read Stephen Hawking that one time, shut up.), Keigo would be said Average Joe in each and every one of them. There was simply nothing distinguishing about him. Straight brown hair, brown eyes, skinny build and a plain face: he was meant to blend in the crowd. That would explain his... Keigo-ness. It's hard to stand out when you know you're nothing special okay?

Second, his sister has a thing for bald blokes. This is something he won't ever understand or be able to explain. It was just another byproduct of the Big Bang

(That Hawking shit really messed him up).

And lastly, the third thing he was one-hundred-fucking-percent sure of, was that Ichigo fucking Kurosaki wasn't fucking human.

What?

Did he stutter?

He could gamble his soul to prove the fact that Ichigo wasn't human. No siree. He was a sword-wielding, black-robe donning, self-sacrificing shithead who was getting his ass handed to him by the monsters of his nightmares right on the streets of Karakura. It didn't help that Keigo had to witness his own two house-guests/moochers change into similar kimonos, pull out swords seemingly out of their asses and actually leap into air with no support whatsoever and remain airborne.

How did this become his life?

Ikkaku... or Yumichika, he doesn't remember who, but one of those idiots tell him to run while they "took care of the problem" and, really, as a (secretly) self-proclaimed natural escapist, who was he to look a gift horse in the mouth?

So Keigo got the hell out of dodge.

When he woke up the next day, Keigo had a splitting headache and his mouth felt like cotton and everything that happened last night just turned out to be a really weird dream.

After his usual dose of caffeine, when he animatedly narrated the events of his dream, Ikkaku choked on his juice and Yumichika stopped twirling his hair. Both scoffed and called him ridiculous.

And that was that.

The next evening, when school ended with a C+ on his History test and a punch in the face from a banged up Ichigo, Keigo heard - no - felt a familiar pressure, less suffocating than the previous one but with enough... energy? to make the hair on his arms stand, and a deafening roar to accompany it. The feeling of dread in the pit of his stomach returned and Keigo realized that he wasn't dreaming the black robes fighting bone masks last night.

As fate would have it, a fortnight later, some ass-clown in a striped hat comes up to him and Mizuiro and tells them to "follow him if they want to know where Ichigo is". School had just ended again, and Ichigo and his newly formed rag-tag excuse of a gang (one that didn't include Keigo and he wasn't bitter about it at all, okay? Drop it.) hadn't shown. Except Ishida. But that guy had the Stick of Academia so far up his backside, Keigo would be surprised if he skipped school despite having to face an apparent life-and-death situation. Otherwise, Chad and Orihime's desks were empty, Rukia (who Keigo figured was definitely one of them) hadn't been to school in a long time anyway, and the rest of the new 'exchange students' had taken to follow Ichigo wherever he went. Needless to say, Keigo was the victim of many of Tatsuki's right-hooks.

Ignoring the alarmingly loud, and surprisingly present conscience in his brain that screamed STRANGER DANGER, Keigo and Mizuiro followed the guy to a convenience store called "Urahara Shop". The employees consisted of two brats - Angry and Emo - he called them, and a Giant of a man with biceps the size of Keigo's head. The furrowed brows and resting bitch face didn't really help the situation and Keigo was definitely one of those lesser men who cowered before it. That was before the man did a full 180, introduced himself as Tessai and force-fed them the hardest rice cakes Keigo has ever eaten. Keigo chalked it up to that being Tessai's mother-henning because... okay - let's face it - big, intimidating guy with pure intentions behind questionable food choices? That was a total Rubeus Hagrid move.

Keigo, however, only liked Tessai till he led them down to the shop's basement which turned out to be some sort of parkour training arena with rocks and mud and holy crap that's Ichigo back in his black robes and the weirdest looking katana ever. And Chad was there too, but one of his arms looked like a Hotweels racing track and- of course Ishida was there, why not, wearing customized nurse scrubs and... is that a portal?!

Obviously a situation like that warranted an over-reaction. Keigo however, managed to impress himself and Mizuiro by completely not freaking the fuck out.

In fact, Keigo was kinda angry. And hurt. The hurt part came later, when he asked Urahara what was going on and all the man gave was a cryptic summary that The Golden Trio were off to another realm to save Orihime.

Yeah.

The fact that everything that had happened the past few weeks with Kuchiki and Madarame and Ayasegawa and Matsumoto for fuck's sa- Everything was a lie. And now Orihime, the sweetest freaking person Keigo had ever had the fortune to meet, was in trouble.

Ichigo hadn't even told Tatsuki about this. And Wasn't that a punch to the gut.

Like. Okay, Keigo knew he wasn't big shit, and that sometimes Ichigo only tolerated his presence. But Tatsuki was his childhood friend. The one who - by the looks of it - practically saved Ichigo's life when his mom died and the carrot-head didn't have the decency to even tell her the truth. Tatsuki had been worried sick about her for the past few days; Keigo would know because he took the most of the brunt of her anger. Even though she didn't like to show it, Keigo could see her falling apart right in front of his eyes because how long had Orihime been missing? Would any of them have ever found out if Kojima and him hadn't just spied on them? What would they tell everyone if - oh God - what if Orihime didn't make it back? What if none of them did?

He couldn't take it anymore. It was all too much.

Keigo was a skeptical person. He didn't show it, didn't have to, but he was. But if Ichigo had just told him - told them, he'd just take it in stride because he trusted Ichigo.

And later, Keigo knew he'd trust Ichigo to save Orihime, because the guy was a stubborn SOB who never learned to back down. Keigo would trust him. He knew.

But now...

Now Keigo needed air, and some time away from the people he knew because it was just suffocating. The whole not-being-in-on-the-joke and secret glances and mysterious disappearances, all while Orihime was in danger. He needed to not be with Mizuiro right now. He needed to just... not be.

So, with an uncharacteristically quite murmur of "I need to go." to Kojima and a "Fuck off!" to a questioning Urahara when he tried to stop him, Keigo left the scene and ran.

And ran and ran and ran.

Because after all, that was all Keigo was good at wasn't he? Running away from his problems. Eventually they would go away. Keigo didn't want to deal with this. He already had a pretty good idea about what Ichigo was and nope. He wasn't ready for that kind tilt in his reality because Shinigami and Reapers helping souls pass on was alright. Whatever. Fine. But villains of said Shinigami attacking his town? Lalalalala - can't hear you.

It would all go away. If he closed his eyes and trusted Ichigo to do his job, the whole thing would just be one big, bad, messed up dream. Just like Keigo had thought it would be.

So, taking it with a pinch of salt and cramming all Halloween-related realities at the back of his mind, Keigo went on with life and pretended he wasn't scared out of his wits. It was all going pretty well too.

Until a week later, when he realized that he was being followed.

* * *

 **A/N: hi! Update: It's been a whole year, yes I know. But i've managed to grasp onto some inspiration for this story (cant say the same about the other one so lets not go there ^^''). Anyway, I've made some changes and have more chapters up on ao3. But I'll add them here as well.**

 **Thanks for your patience!**

 **-SA**


	2. Chapter 2

At first Keigo thought it was one of Oshima's runts.

Those guys had been screwing with him through the entirely of his high school year, and that too because they thought he was Ichigo's cheerleader or something during The Fight™. Which - No. Quite the opposite actually, Keigo was definitely not on Ichigo's side because rumours about his orange hair had actually freaked him out enough to cause a mental breakdown when he discovered that him and Chad were going to be in his class.

Although he'd changed his mind post-fight and did in fact become Ichigo's biggest cheerleader, regardless of how the latter might see it.

The point was: Oshima decided that Keigo was weak enough to be picked on alone, but not helpless enough to be picked on while Ichigo was nearby. Which would explain the plethora of sneakily stolen bike tires, groceries and, on a particularly nasty occasion his Nintendo 3DS, every time he went home by himself.

Lately they had also taken to stalking him with absolutely zero discreteness and sending him threatening messages in the poorest possible imitation of Liam Neeson. By this stage, Keigo almost couldn't take them seriously.

So it was quite the horrible surprise when this time, his stalker not only caught up to him but also managed to (rather easily) cover his face in a black mask with hands that felt far too professional for them to belong to a teenage thug.

That's when Keigo realised that he was probably getting kidnapped.

If asked, he will passionately tell you that he resisted with all his might, kicked and screamed himself hoarse, made sure he landed at least one hit on his offender. In reality Keigo froze in fear for one whole second, and in the next he was unconscious.

He woke naturally, much like waking up from the wrong side of a long, afternoon nap. It took his eyes a few minutes to flutter open and adjust to the slightly dull lighting in whatever room he was. He still felt sluggish and vaguely realised that he was expertly cuffed to a chair, but he could not bring himself to panic yet. Keigo felt slightly lightheaded, as if he was floating somewhere. He felt drugged. He was probably drugged.

"Wha-?" he gave up speaking when he felt his mouth go drier than the Sahara. He looked around and saw that instead of a damp, dark warehouse, he was kept in a sophisticated room with expensive-looking, dull metallic walls that somewhat resembled a honeycomb. There was no door that he could see, hell, no two-way mirror either.

Except for him on the chair, it was barren. It looked exactly like what a cell would in some posh-ass asylum. Or like, the Pentagon.

Shit.

Was he in the Pentagon?

The panic Keigo was so desperately wishing to arrive came in like a freight train and suddenly all he could think of was 'Holy shit holy shit holy fucking shit I'm gonna die this is definitely not Oshima's work fucking shiii-' until he was promptly cutoff by a disembodied voice which made him squeak in fright and Keigo was pretty sure he peed his pants.

"Mr. Asano, I recommend breathing deeply in counts of 3 to stave off the panic." the voice said.

"Fuck." was all Keigo heaved in reply. He was so screwed, he was so fucked. This was it. This was the end, he was going to die and there will be nobody to find his body because he was pretty sure he was in a lab and they were going to experiment on him oh my god oh my go-

"Mr. Asano." the voice sounded slightly more human this time and Keigo opened his eyes (when did he close them?! They were controlling his movements now, oh god) to see a man in a crisp black suit standing a few feet away from him.

How did he even get in?

"There's a camouflage door behind me," the man (now labeled Penta-man in Keigo's head. Stressful situations often rendered his imagination scarce so that was all he could come up with) explained.

Okay, so Keigo said that out loud. They were totally controlling him. "No we're not. You're understandably in a state of fear and anxiety, but I can assure you, you have nothing to worry about."

"I-I didn't do a-anything! I swear!"

Penta-man nodded, "We're aware Mr. Asano. We just wish to ask you a few questions, after which you can leave immediately." Who's we?!

"You ki-kidnapped me!" Keigo exclaimed, now trembling. He was going to cry any second now.

"Yes well. That could have admittedly been handled better, but as I said. Only a few questions and you're free to go."

"W-who are you?" he stuttered meekly.

Penta-man paused slightly, not that Keigo noticed, he was too busy trying not to die of a heart attack. "We call ourselves Strategic Homeland Intervention Enforcement and Logistics Division. Essentially we take care of government and security affairs, so you can relax. We're the good guys here Mr. Asano."

"That's what the bad guy would say!" Keigo officially had no idea where he was spewing this word vomit from. He should know better than to talk back to his captors for god's sake!

The cuffs that held his hands to the arms of the chairs suddenly opened. Not-Penta-man-But-Equally-Government-Guy smiled calmly. "That's true, but you will have to take my word for it. Five minutes is all I ask of you. Then we will personally escort you back to your doorstep. Safe." He added at Keigo's mortified expression.

There was clearly no point in arguing. Whoever these Strategic thingamajig were, they probably won't let him out until they got what they wanted. Keigo supposed opening the cuffs was just a sign of good faith, he was pretty sure this guy could take him in two seconds flat.

Hell, maybe he was the one who roofied him in the first place.

Keigo shoved those thoughts aside and nodded hesitantly.

The man smiled again, but it looked a little less creepy.

"We'd like to know everything about your friendship with Kurosaki Ichigo."

What.

So this was not the first time Keigo got into trouble because of Ichigo. Oshima and Not-Penta-man had that in common. But the whole situation was a series of firsts for Keigo: not only did he lose his kidnapping virginity to someone not homeless (Keigo would count that as a win sometime in the future when this incident feels funny enough) but was also asked how many times he and Ichigo hang-out each day.

The answer to the latter was an honest and meager amount of once, something Keigo found quite sad. Ichigo almost never wanted to hang and now that he had soul reaper powers-

Oh.

Oh.

So that's what the government wanted to know. Keigo could have smacked himself for not realising it sooner, but the guy's questions were so generic and vague that Keigo answered accordingly. It didn't even occur to him to talk about Ichigo's shinigami abilities, but that could be blamed at the staunch repression of last week's actual supernatural disaster. Keigo however, suspected the man got what he wanted anyways. Because true to his word, Not-Penta-Man wrapped up in five minutes and he was safely dropped home in a drool-worthy black Lexus (the side of the car had the logo of the agency with the initials S.H.I.E.L.D. which, in Keigo's opinion, was much less of a mouthful).

Keigo didn't know how he felt about some secret government body knowing about this secret - even if you could really call it one, there were only so many 'earthquakes' that Karakura could have without making it suspicious. Hell, he didn't even know if he was talking to the Japanese government, too busy trying not to piss himself. His captor - ahem - interviewer was definitely Japanese and didn't have any tattoos as far as Keigo could tell, so he probably wasn't involved with the Yakuza.

Probably.

He should go to Urahara's shop to tell them what happened. As much as he didn't like that asshat, maybe he'd know something about it.

Apparently Urahara did know something about it.

Meaning: Urahara knew something about it but acted dumb to show that he didn't know anything about it. All he left Keigo with was a "we should be careful then. I'll see if I can find something on them", which to Keigo's now very alert brain read "don't look into this again or else".

Well then. That's that. Keigo would happily transfer this responsibility to someone who actually knew what they were doing and forget about this whole situation. He's much rather suited for staring at boobs and playing video games and staring at boobs in the video games.

Life was so much easier that way.

Of course, then he had to go and get attacked by another hollow.

* * *

 **A/N: Here is chapter 2! I've decided to go through a slightly more comedic route than TASS, and so the genre of this story will be action and mild humour - or at least my terrible attempts at it. Chapter 3 will be up next week 'cause I'm trying to stay ahead of my posting. But to anyone who stuck around, thank you so much! And to new readers (if any), hi! You can view this story on ao3 as well.**

 **-SA**


	3. Chapter 3

Apparently close proximity to someone with high spiritual power for long periods of time transfers some of that energy onto non-spiritual, completely mundane humans.

And since Keigo had literally rubbed himself all over the Reiatsu-Squad during his last attempts at fanboying over Ichigo's awesomeness, he was pretty damn spiritually sensitive.

So were Tatsuki and Mizuiro, but they made up for it with decent amount of luck so of course the hollow would go after him instead.

There he was, minding his own business late in the evening, events of the previous day long repressed forgotten as Keigo sipped the carton of juice he was meant to buy for his sister (she was going to give him hell for it, but she does that either way so might as well get something out of it), when he heard a deafening roar.

It could have been a collection of dogs howling in the neighbourhood, or even the scream of a particularly enthusiastic metal-head. Hell, it could have been Iron Man making rounds of the city playing Back in Black through giant speakers just for fun - Keigo heard he did that sometimes; he'd seen enough Youtube videos to learn that Tony Stark was the coolest asshole ever.

Still, Keigo would have managed to - after gushing embarrassingly for a few, long seconds - ignore it completely and move on, but seeing as no one else flinched hard enough to cause a minor seizure, or even act mildly startled, he had to assume it was a sentient non-living thing that wasn't a flying metal suit.

So Keigo decided to do what any morally upstanding citizen would have done: he shrieked ungracefully and began running.

Of course, Urahara hadn't told him that hollow attacks weren't random. That those monsters targeted Karakura solely because it was ridiculously high in spirit pressure because of fucking Ichigo, and by association, Keigo himself. And that if a hollow was strong or smart enough, it would be able to track the source of the spiritual deliciousness and follow it.

No, Keigo was informed about this much, much later, when the use of such information almost felt trivial.

Obviously, this hollow happened to be both strong and smart and Keigo was being chased deeper into the city and farther away from home in no time.

Keigo's upper body remained in a state of petrification while his legs (thankfully), developed a brain of their own and decided to carry him to all sorts of nooks and crannies of the town that he didn't even know existed. The hollow found his latest hiding spot and swiped a large, ugly grey hand across the two adjacent walls, causing the entire building to shake.

(And then people thought it was another earthquake and began evacuating. Goddamn it.)

Keigo screamed and dodged the hollow, getting up and running blindly towards another glass building. His legs burned with exhaustion, his chest felt like a mallet was being hit against it as he tried to get away from the monster. It was fucking huge, not like the ones that beat Ichigo into a pulp - those almost looked human - but this one resembled a giant sea creature that was left to rot on the Flying Dutchman for too long. It reminded him briefly of something he had seen way before he even knew about Ichigo's powers; something darker and with a similar skull, but Keigo was immediately distracted by another roar that could have been a war cry because the hollow was moving faster now, and getting closer by the second and fuck he was going to die for the second time in as many days. Fuck fuck fuck, where were the soul reapers when you needed them?!

He stumbled a bit, but managed to enter the tall building just in time, for the hollow's ginormous foot stepped on his exact location from a moment ago.

Keigo didn't know how long he could keep it up, it wouldn't be long before the creature dug a big enough hole into the building for him to crawl through. With shaking hands, Keigo searched to see if his pocket if he still had his phone. A pathetic cry of triumph later, he was calling Urahara's number.

The hollow's screeches echoed through the empty area - which frankly, should have clued Keigo in to not entering it - and the building shook slightly. Keigo whimpered and waiting for the shinigami to pick up. After the fifth ring went unanswered, Keigo hung up and tried to think of someone - anyone else who could deal with it post-Ichigo-and-Co.'s absence.

Just as he was about to give up and call the firefighters, Keigo witnessed the exact moment that would change the rest of his life forever, if this whole supernatural thing hadn't already.

The glass panels from the hollow's side were smashed to pieces, some of them nestling themselves shallowly into Keigo's skin. The other side though, clearly showed part of the open sky and the slightly destroyed infrastructure, which was why a black airplane - actual airplane - landing right in front of him nearly made Keigo faint. Because the side of the plane had the logo of a geometric eagle and the guy coming out of it was definitely Penta-man followed by two other people who were definitely not the Japanese government.

Another roar snapped him out of his reverie, forcing Keigo to crouch further into his small corner of apparent safety and start panicking like it was the last thing he was going to do. It probably was, 'cause Keigo was exhausted, with no idea how long he'd been running and no shinigam coming to the rescue. Penta-man probably thought he could deal with the literal monstrosity on the opposite side, but despite their short meeting yesterday, this guy had no idea what he was getting into.

Keigo watched in slow motion from his vantage point as the three very human people in black bodysuits quickly jogged their way towards the hollow and, within fifteen minutes of complete martial arts-y spy-like action, zapped - Keigo shits you not zapped - the hollow into dust and out of existence.

He was trembling with fear and fatigue when they reached him, Penta-man looking less concerned and more miffed while some white, blonde lady was rapidly talking to what he could only guess was an earpiece. He was regarded with surprising gentleness when they wordlessly made him stand on shaky legs.

"Mr. Asano, will you be able to walk?" Penta-man's voice sounded too calm for someone who witnessed the disintegration of a giant ghost sea-monster. Fuckin' secret agents.

"You lot 're spies aren't you." Keigo replied before promptly blacking out.

* * *

He woke up in a hospital room with Ishida's dad reading from a clipboard with a bored expression.

He also woke up feeling like death.

Apparently he must have made a sad noise of despair because the old coot only stared at him with cool indifference, as if this was not the first time he was treating this patient.

(It wasn't, but that was their little secret.)

"How are you feeling?" Ishida's dad began checking his vitals and immediately placed a glass of water with a straw in front of him. Keigo thought he voiced an appreciative hum but at this point it probably sounded like a dolphin mid-vomit. He couldn't tell, it felt like there was something blocking his ears.

After sipping his water slowly, Keigo tried speaking again, "M'kay."

Ryuken sighed.

"You were right in the middle of an earthquake," the distaste in his tone at the last word showed that he was definitely not talking about an earthquake, and said not-earthquake was something Ryuken wasn't particularly fond of. "And feeling something other than 'okay' is acceptable. Wise, even."

"Didn' know hollows w'smar," Keigo closed his eyes again, trying to recall that whole clusterfuck of a situation, "Why 's it afta' me?"

"Because you're small and easy bait," the doctor deadpanned and Keigo distantly felt like he wanted to hit him, but was too tired to do so. "Your sister's in the waiting area for a short break, I will go and fetch her. Try to stay awake, you've taken worse hits from that Kurosaki boy than this." He said Ichigo's name much like he was talking about the 'earthquake' again and briskly walked out of the room. Huh. Like father like son, then.

Barely seconds later, instead of his sister rushing through, Keigo was met with the face of - fuck - Penta-man again, this time wearing his usual formal suit. His memories slowly trickled in and Keigo knew just what was under that boring blazer and tie. This guy was armed to the teeth. Asshole.

"Mr. Asano," he began and Keigo sighed.

"Go 'way." he mumbled, not caring if he sounded petulant. Keigo had a terrible habit of immediately trusting people who beat up bullies for a living, so he wasn't worried that he'd be abducted or tortured or whatever it is spies did. This dude kept his promise of dropping him back home and saved his life, something even Ichigo hadn't achieved yet.

"I'm afraid we'll have to have this chat now. Don't worry, I will try not to stress you out." Penta-man insisted.

Keigo assented with a nod and a pout.

"As we've told you, we are Strategic Homeland Inter-"

"Yeah SHIELD. Saw th' logo, go on," the man's face gave into a flicker of surprise before turning neutral again.

"That is correct. And as a government organization, it is also a part of our job to handle sensitive affairs such as the events that occurred yesterday."

"Shit. Tha' was yest'day?! How long was I 'sleep?" Keigo exclaimed.

"Long enough for your body to heal. As I was saying," he continued without preamble, "We deal with extraordinary situations that the local forces are not equipped to manage. And as you had a large part to play in that event, we'd like you to come by our office early this evening to answer some questions about what happened."

Keigo blinked slowly. He should have felt this coming, but seeing as he literally just woke up, his lack of brain usage was excusable. But he was by no means stupid- No. Listen. He really wasn't. When the time was right, he knew how to put two and two together.

He saw what happened yesterday.

They saw that he saw what happened.

Then he, like an idiot, blurted out what he thought he saw.

And now they think he knows too much.

Which really, just confirmed his longstanding theory of Penta-man and his lackeys. They were spies and apparently had the toys to pulverize supernatural monsters.

Now, it was no secret that Keigo was an attention seeker. But he'd rather get that attention from the hot senior girls in school than from jackbooted government officials who apparently ate hollows for breakfast, Bigfoot for lunch and The Lochness Monster for dinner.

Keigo said as much out loud.

Penta-man's mouth twitched, "Nessie doesn't lie under our jurisdiction. And she's quite kind actually." With that he stood up and placed a card on the side-table, ignoring Keigo's dumbfounded expression, "You will be released today and our vehicle will escort you and your sister back home. Please call us if you need anything. We will pick you up at 5 pm. Good day Mr. Asano."

He left just as Mizuho entered in a rush, looking back confusedly for a moment before stalking her way to Keigo and enveloping him in a gentle hug. Then she smacked him on the head.

"Of course you would be stuck in a bloody earthquake in the middle of the city, idiot!" she raised her hand again while Keigo did the same in defense.

"I'm hurt! You can't do that!"

Mizuho stuck her tongue out instead.

"Mom and dad are coming back. They'll be here for a while I guess," Keigo cringed. "Oi! Be glad that they're even coming this time." Mizuho fussed over her brother for the next ten minutes until he was comfortably settled and within reaching distance of a fresh pair of clothes, some water and a protein bar.

"By the way idiot, who was that guy who left your room?" She asked looking up from her phone.

"Mm? Oh he was… from the police station, yeah. Said something about safety and to not roam around late in the evening or whatever." Please buy it please buy it please buy it pleas-

"Huh. Okay." Mizuho hesitantly shrugged and got back to texting.

Keigo glanced at the card next to him and slowly picked it up. On it was the same eagle symbol in shiny chrome-like lamination. Gosh, were these guys fancy or what.

The numbers and letters were barely visible but if he squinted hard enough, Keigo could make out that he's apparently been talking to Fujikawa Yoshiro for the past couple of days. And will continue to do so in the foreseeable future.

He blames Kisuke for this.

* * *

 **A/N: So this story doesn't really have a set pace. Sometimes several events happen too fast aka chapter 1, and the rest will take their time. It's not on purpose or something clever. I'm just writing the way I feel the narrative fits. As previously mentioned, this story is also available on ao3 so you can check it out. I go by LeGrange there.**

 **Please leave a review and tell me what you think should/could happen. I really love headcanons about bleach and crossover/AU ones more so.**

 **See you next time :)**

 **-SA**


	4. Chapter 4

Keigo decided that from this point onward all of his internal monologues will begin with 'Kisuke is an asshole'.

He didn't pick up any of Keigo's 14 missed calls since he got back from the hospital, did not reply to any of his frantic texts, and given the annoying voicemail message on the shop's landline, had closed the damned store for an indefinite amount of time. Keigo's never hooked up with anyone before and he was already being ghosted like nobody's business.

Keigo belatedly wondered if he should pull the desperate boyfriend act and stop by Urahara Shop anyway, but he had the distinct impression that there would be no one to welcome his loud banging on the front door with a death glare and granite-hard rice cakes. There was also that thing where he was now on an intelligence organization's radar so he would have neither the privacy, nor the time to see Urahara himself. Instead, Keigo resorted to spending the rest of his late morning by downing painkillers and googling anything he could about SHIELD.

Unsurprisingly, nothing useful popped up, just a bunch of clip-art images of poorly drawn medieval weaponry and links to old Captain America fan-art that he wished he'd never clicked. He then tried searching for the actual name of the agency, but couldn't remember past Homeland, and so instantly gave up; he figured if they wanted to get info out of him, they'd have to cough up some too. At least he knew they were American now. Keigo trusted the Japanese government to not use ostentatious acronyms if they aimed for subtlety.

Before he knew it, it was almost time for Penta-man to send his minions to pick him up. Keigo probably should have informed his sister, but since she didn't know about hollows and shinigami - which, really. She ought to be smarter than this. It wasn't as if Madarame was actively hiding it from her - Keigo decided to make up an excuse about meeting Mizuiro for a bit. After some initial resistance with her trying to forcefully tuck him into bed, Mizuho relented and told him to be back before dinner. She also planted his meds in his pocket with narrowed eyes and a threatening 'I'll know if you don't take them."

Geez, if only she spoiled him like this on a regular basis.

The driver was an unassuming man with dark sunglasses and the trademark black suit, who expertly swerved the car out of its hiding spot and onto the road. Keigo made it a point to remember the directions to this 'office' all while secretly hoping he wasn't being led to a dungeon. It was a terrible habit but he did trust Penta-man, and hoped he wouldn't come to regret it. Much.

They reached in about 20 minutes, surprisingly fast since they were in central Tokyo now. The driver entered an underground parking lot of a large corporate building, creating a dull shadow over everything. Keigo suppressed a shiver and ignored his thumping heart.

It was just a parking lot. No big deal.

Except murders and abductions happen in parking lots. Keigo watched enough Criminal Minds to know that.

"Where are we going?" he demanded suddenly. The driver did not respond and kept going into the lower floors. " I-I'd like to get out now…" his voice trembled and he reached for the handle.

"We're almost there," came a gruff reply. The sound of the car doors locking shut reverberated in Keigo's ears. Swallowing the gigantic lump of foreboding in his throat, Keigo prayed to kami to not end his life yet. He'd just acquired the new Super Mario game and preferred not to die before even playing it.

Two and a half antagonizing minutes later, they finally reached an elevator which automatically opened and led the car inside. Before Keigo could react, the elevator was heading lower - way lower - into the ground.

What. the. fuck.

No building should have parking that below the earth, Keigo inwardly protested. Then he remembered Urahara's training facility and almost banged his head against the front seat in frustration. Spies and their fucking basements.

They abruptly stopped and the doors opened to revea- Holy motherfucking shit on a stick.

He was inside Spy Headquarters.

Holy _shiiiit._

That was the only thing this place could've been. With chrome walls that went across the large area, seemingly endless in its sleekness, gigantic computer screens that looked like belonged to a spaceship in a futuristic sci-fi universe - all decked up from top to bottom on some corners, while the others held actual holographs of some kind that twirled delicately at the touch of nimble fingers. There were desks that held more workstations and trolleys that were constantly moved (Keigo was pretty sure one of them carried a handful of guns he'd never seen before, even on the internet). But the _people_. Oh god they were all sorts of professional and dangerous. Some were dressed in the same suit-and-tie combo while others donned black combat uniforms and bulletproof vests, apparently leaving room through a door on the extreme right that Keigo knew wasn't there five seconds ago.

Screw FBI. He was in 00- _Heaven._

He so desperately wanted to capture this image in his head (being absolutely sure that this would be the last time he'd see this) that Keigo automatically went to reach for his phone. Only to find that it wasn't there.

Blinking in puzzlement, Keigo looked up to see the driver, still in sunglasses, coolly slipping the phone into his breast-pocket and nodding his head towards the room. "Follow me," he didn't wait for an answer as he walked past Keigo, the latter snapping back to the present and scrambling behind him.

They walked past several of said professional and dangerous people and the teenager didn't bother masking his ogling. One of the holographs was handled by a very attractive but also extremely frazzled woman, who was mumbling some complicated English words beyond Keigo's understanding. Although by the looks of the projection - a map of tents encircling some strange object that was giving off readings that definitely weren't _numbers_ , the woman could be worried about the gavel-like thing exploding.

He passed the next screen in a hurry, catching up to Agent McBroody, but Keigo swore they were studying a black cat.

Oh. Well.

Maybe the cat could also explode? Who knows. Keigo just guessed that's what spies worked on so.

McBroody stopped outside the first office that gave way to a corridor and ushered Keigo in. It was a lot smaller that he anticipated. Just a desk, a large, empty leather chair behind it, and two smaller ones for people who weren't the boss. Keigo unceremoniously took a seat and waited for whoever was going to question him.

Whoever came exactly 30 seconds later in the form of Penta-man who looked like something a very posh cat coughed up, still looking professional as all hell. He dismissed the driver and greeted Keigo with the same formality as he had for the last two days.

Jesus, was that just two days ago?

"Mr. Asano," Penta-man - Keigo should probably call him Fujikawa now - began, "I hope you are feeling better since this morning."

Keigo shrugged nervously, "Um. Sure."

"I'm afraid we must cut right to the chase. Last evening you were found in the Yamaha building while being viciously attacked by an unknown species we like to call 0-8-4. Is that correct?"

"0-8- W-what?"

"It's code for objects or living things that are not classified on any database in the world yet. However, if I remember correctly, you called this species a Hollow. So you are already aware of them." It wasn't a question and Keigo wasn't sure he'd be able to deny it if it was.

"D-did I really say that?" he tried anyway, although why he refused to admit the truth was beyond him. It felt quite like betraying his friends for some reason, even though Keigo knew that Shinigami business went further than just Ichigo. Spewing out this stuff to outsiders simply didn't sit right with him.

"You did. SHIELD would greatly appreciate if you could tell us more about these creatures as where they come from. You will be compensated for your cooperation, of course."

Did this asshole just.

On any other occasion, Keigo was above receiving bribes, especially if it came in the form of gaming consoles, dates with hot girls or Kurosaki Yuzu's baking. But now knowing how tight-lipped SHIELD possibly was, being practically a ghost organization told him a lot about their desperation for any sort of information.

He'd seen enough Hollywood movies to know that these guys were usually up to no good.

And like hell would Keigo grass up his friends. Relying on Fujikawa for saving him was one thing, involving him in something possibly did not need Human Intelligence was another. Wasn't this stuff supposed to be a secret from humans in the first place?

Taking a deep breath, Keigo felt himself somewhat calm down. His loyalty just might cost him his life - and Keigo was loyal to a fault, if nothing else - but it wasn't his secret to tell.

"I'm afraid I don't know what you're talking about, Sir-" he stated, "-I don't remember saying anything of the sort."

Pen- _Fujikawa's_ expression did not change apart from a small twitch of eyebrows that Keigo only noticed because he was looking for it. He did not say anything, apparently assessing the teenager; probably wondering how he could torture out the truth out of him, Keigo gulped at the thought but tried to remain as stoic (ha.) as he could.

He almost jumped out of his seat when the agent leaned forward, almost conspiratorially, "Mr. Asano, I understand why you would not trust us," Keigo inwardly scoffed at that, he'd trusted this guy enough to come here, "-however, as an organization that aims for world peace on a much large scale, your help is necessary. I'm not supposed to tell you this but-" the long sigh he gave made Keigo feel kinda bad, "-there have been events… very recent ones… where we believe knowledge about this Hollow might be extremely useful. There's a high chance of these two occurrences being related and we would not have disturbed you had we no other choice."

Ah. So they _did_ try to rope Urahara in. See? Keigo wasn't stupid.

But if Urahara didn't say anything then…

Keigo feigned a helpless shrug, "I'd love to help you man, but like I said. I don't know anything about that monster. I was just walking home and suddenly that thing was chasing me." A thought occurred to him suddenly, "Besides, you guys pretty much destroyed that thing, so obviously you know _something_ about it. I just dunno how I can help."

The agent's lips thinned and he looked a lot less polite than he did a moment ago. Keigo prayed that he didn't decide to just strap him to this chair like he did the first time and beat him to submission. Loyal he might be, and his threshold for pain was tremendous, but he'd rather leave this premise unscathed thanks very much.

"Nothing that a little science can't fix." Fujikawa grimaced, "Very well, if that is your decision, Takashi will escort you out." And just like that, Keigo was… let go.

Keigo visibly deflated, something that even the dumbest person could see, but he didn't care. Since Penta-man (his real name just wouldn't stick) could see right through his charade anyhow, Keigo could drop all pretense and just shakily make his way out of the office.

Of course, the thought of this being too easy did cross his mind, but Keigo was too tired and in pain (he forgot to take his pills, shit.) to care. Agent McBroody was waiting by the hallway to lead him back to the car, from a different path now: this corridor being mostly empty and not nearly as exciting.

He was dropped outside his flat without much fan-fair and now that he was back home, all Keigo wanted was to plonk on his bed like a sack of potatoes and sleep for 10 hours straight.

Mizuho was gone for the evening (thank fuck) over to her latest conquest's lair, Keigo shuddered at that. He quickly made his way to his room and decided to fire a text to Urahara just in case the slimy fucker decided to show his face.

Then he realised that, although he had his phone _now_ , it was under SHIELD custody for total of 10 minutes. Which, for an agency with the fanciest tech equipment and actual military personnel, was more than enough time to go through his contacts and find his plenty missed calls and very-much-not-deleted messages to Kisuke.

Fuck.

* * *

Keigo skipped dinner, his appetite lost somewhere on the way to the shop as he thought about the consequences of his accidental slip up. His heart was hammering against his rib-cage in anxiety and he felt so fidgety, he began picking at the small bandages over his palms. Kisuke would be pissed, obviously. Keigo hoped that despite this whole fiasco, the man - who was a lot better at dealing with jackbooted thugs - would just take over the reins and be done with it.

He somewhat expected the striped bastard to be absent, but the shop was still surprisingly open. Keigo entered the place only to be met with the terror twins sitting by the table next to Big Friendly Giant, Tatsuki, Chizuru and… Don Kanonji?!

For a moment Keigo completely forgot that he was being stalked by spies who dealt with supernatural shit and squealed in excitement because it's not everyday you get to see your favourite reality show star!

His arms did that weird, flail-y thing that often got him punched in the face and dramatically pointed towards the celebrity in question. Don. Kanonji. Right in front of him. Keigo briefly pondered if SHIELD had drugged him on the way back 'cause a) there was no way this could be real and b) he'll need to get back to them and ask for more because this shit was _good_.

"Y-you! Oh my God it's-" Keigo crossed his arms against his chest in the trademark post and half-shouted, "BOHAHAH- Ow! Tatsuki. What the hell?"

Tatsuki only muttered an 'idiot' before sitting back down, her knuckles unsurprisingly unaffected whilst Keigo's head took the brunt. "We're having an important discussion at the moment. What are you doing here anyway?"

"I- uh…" suddenly, six pairs of eyes were on him and it made Keigo largely aware none of these were Kisuke and would therefore not be able to help him. "I'm looking for Urahara?"

"He's out of town on business," Keigo almost rolled his eyes at that. Almost. Psh. Business. Yeah right. "I am in charge of the shop until then. Is there anything you wanted?" Tessai was unbelievably polite despite the ruckus Keigo had made.

"No. Just wanted- Ah. Never mind. I'll come back la-"

"Wait a minute! You can see hollows too right?" Chizuru piped up.

"Uh… yeah?"

They all shared a knowing look before turning back to him in terrifying synchronization. This was not going to end well.

Keigo all but took one step back before Tatsuki was all up in his personal space and coercing him to join their pseudo-superhero team with an effective mixture of threats and guilt-trips.

"What?! N-no way! I can't defeat hollows, I could barely-" _get away from them._ He realised that no one here knew about his little altercation from yesterday.

"Asano! We're the only hope Karakura has. There aren't enough shinigami to protect the whole town and the number of hollows incoming are massive." _Tell me about it._ "How do you think Ichigo and Ori-everyone else would feel i-when they come back and see this town destroyed?!"

Hook, line and sinker. Keigo had nowhere to go but down.

Fuck SHIELD, fuck Tatsuki and especially fuck Kisuke.

These guys were going to be the death of him.

Fuck them _all._

* * *

 **A/N: Sorry nothing much happens here except him turning SHIELD down, but next chapter is all about how that might change, so don't fret! Poor renditions of badass!Keigo will be coming up. And yes, SHIELD let him into their HQ and feed him sensitive New Mexico-related info. even though realistically its unlikely. I have reasons for that which will be explained later in the story if it isn't self-explanatory already so yeah, I'm using the excuse of artistic license for this purposeful inconsistency.**

 **Reviews are always appreciated and headcanons too.**

 **Until next time,**

 **-SA**


	5. Chapter 5

The next week sucked ass.

The japanese ghostbusters team he was a part of was called Karakura-Raizer and he was assigned the codename 'Delicate' by a strong, unanimous vote. It would have stung a lot more if it wasn't true; still, having that as your superhero name at your first and only chance of being one was… unfortunate, to say the least.

But Keigo never did score on the luck department so.

The point was, Karakura-Raizer was supposed to help out that shinigami with the Afro, because apparently, the higher ups didn't think Keigo's town was worth a damn despite their darling substitute soul-reaper residing here, and therefore allot no more than one skilled warrior (and Keigo used the term 'skilled' very loosely here) for defense against hollows. So, it was up to a bunch of semi-talented spirit seekers to play ghost hunters with the supposed 'small fry'.

Except that these small fry were anything but, what with having the ability to _fly._

Keigo was afraid of many things, heights certainly being one of them, so never in his life had he thought that he'd be balancing himself on an open-air bright pink jet with four other people with one of his favourite celebrities piloting it.

Then again, he never thought he'd witness anything moderately supernatural nor have an intelligence agency tail him.

Oh yeah. Keigo knew about his apartment being potentially wired. It would only make sense that they'd take advantage of an empty home, except he had no idea _where_ the bugs were so it was mostly just a lost cause.

Besides, funnily enough, he had more important things to worry about. Like trying not to fall off a flying hollow's back as it erratically looped in circles fifty fucking feet in the air. Keigo clutching the rubbery flesh of something dead and rotten would have made him puke if the dizziness didn't get to him first.

Finally, after Kon (who was essentially just another Keigo in Ichigo's body. Wait. No. Ew) death-beamed as many monsters as he could and Don Kanonji rammed his jet against the rest, did Keigo deem it to be safe to get down. Barring the fact that Kon's tactical genius meant attacking the hollow he was riding and the next thing he knew, Keigo was falling from the sky and onto something surprisingly both squishy and hard.

The object he landed on turned out to be a rather human-looking hollow with the Playboy logo casing her head like a helmet. She was powerful though, he could tell, but before either of them could do anything, Tatsuki (bless her) blasted a spiritual fireball and absolutely annihilated the villain of the day.

Keigo was so relieved he flung his arms around his friend in the most platonic way ever. That did not matter to Tatsuki however, since he was still evidently a perv and she punched him right on the nose.

Ah fuck, that was gonna bruise.

Then Tessai came up, congratulated them on their first successful mission and ushered them back to school before lunch time ended.

* * *

The upcoming few days went by in a similar fashion, with Karakura-Raizer team more-or-less attempting to reduce the number of hollows entering the town. Afro-dude certainly looked a lot more relaxed, but that was probably because the purple, tentacle like monster on Thursday somehow got distracted by Keigo running around the block and decided to follow _him_ instead.

The situation had reminded him too much of that evening he was chased into the city and then rescued by SHIELD, but at least then he was confident in their ability to protect him despite their mortality and extremely breakable, human bones. Now… well, he was a part of a novice squad of amateurs and his only superpower was running away from the monsters.

It kinda stung when Kisuke told him his superpower via the short video chat they had on Saturday evening. Made Keigo more aware as the days went by as 'Raizer-Delicate', that running away from his problems was all he knew. He did it when he learnt the truth about Ichigo, he did it when SHIELD asked him to help and now… now he was barely any use to the team. He was probably doing more harm than good, going by the number of times Tatsuki's yelled at him.

Well he didn't ask for this did he?

He was, in fact, very much against the idea of doing anything that made him Lawful Good.

Tatsuki _and_ Kisuke could go lie in the grave they buried themselves.

 _Oops,_ Keigo _winced, poor choice of words._

The next Monday was recon for an enormous demon-den floating in the sky for everyone to see. It looked fucking terrifying, and Tessai was telling them that they were supposed to go _in_ and destroy _each individual hollow_ for the fortress to break. There had to have been thousands of them and everyone on the team besides Kon and weirdly enough, Ururu were bone-tired.

Keigo might be a lot more spiritually aware since ten days ago, but even he had his limits.

Still, like good little soldiers, they went to battle and fought a purple haired hollow because of whom Keigo now knew that her kind were called 'Arrancar', there was someone called Aizen coming over for a villain-y sleepover and that Chizuru was most definitely gay and always horny.

Tatsuki still thought _he_ was the pervert.

By the time they were done, Keigo just wanted to sleep for three days straight. He thought he'd get home first, but his eyes snapped shut in a dreamless slumber the second he stepped on the terrace.

* * *

Keigo woke in his school uniform, confused, uncertain and slightly terrified because there was absolutely no one outside. He only had to look inside one residential window to know that the whole town was asleep. For what, Keigo had no idea and he didn't want to find out.

As usual, luck didn't side with him and he met Tatsuki just long enough to see two tall, immensely, ridiculously, hopelessly formidable figures walking past one of the streets. Tatsuki all but fell to her knees as they were approached, Chizuru's limp form over his shoulders while his friend, his partner, _the one who was always left out_ , held Michiru from their class.

She had told him to run, too overcome by fear as the one with the long hair drew out his sword. He looked _alien_. But what gripped Keigo the most was the reiatsu he was giving off. It was all-consuming, dark and absolutely _stifling,_ Keigo could tell that much even though he wasn't as affected by Tatsuki who could barely breathe.

Keigo wanted to help her, he could still stand, still run. Hell, he was barely even sweating although he objectively knew the spirit pressure should hurt him just as much. But what use would that be? Here they were, two teenagers, unarmed carrying their unconscious friends trying to beat walking armories of supernatural entities whose power maybe even Ichigo couldn't beat. It was suicide trying to go up against these guys.

Running away… that he could do. He had done it countless times. He didn't want to, he wanted to be brave for once, stand his ground, fight back. But Keigo wasn't stupid, there would be no point if the long-haired bastard could simply snap them all like a twig. At least if he ran, he could save more lives than staying, realistically.

So Keigo ran again. With his slightly enhanced speed he sprinted out of reach all while suppressing his horror at the consequences of his actions. But he didn't look back.

It didn't end there, of course it didn't. It never fucking does.

He met up with Mizuiro and they hid in an alleyway where Keigo found an unconscious Afro-dude. According to his best friend, the shinigami fell unconscious when a large wave of spirit pressure entered the area; Mizuiro dimly admitted he almost did too. He looked weak and tired and Keigo was glad he turned down being a part of the Raizer team.

'Cause in the end it all meant fuck all if they were going to be defeated anyway.

 _No._ Keigo thought, _we need a distraction, anything to buy more time for Ichigo to come here._ Tatsuki had told him the strawberry knucklehead would figure something out, hell, the humanoid moth-monster they were facing said it himself: Ichigo had new power, and he will be coming for him. So all they had to do was ensure that there was no collateral damage in the mean time.

Keigo tried very hard not to think of himself as collateral and he picked up the zanpaktou on the floor.

"Keigo what—" Mizuiro began before realisation dawned upon him, "No."

"Someone has to—"

"Absolutely _not_. Are you crazy? You don't stand a chance Keigo—"

"You think I don't know that?" Keigo snapped, he knew he wasn't good enough damnit, even when he wanted to be, "We need more time for Ichigo to get here, and if it means even a second longer then I'm gonna take it." Just then, a wave of familiarly suffocating _reiatsu_ engulfed them. "He's here. Aizen." Keigo gulped and left the alley.

When he faced Aizen, he honestly had no idea what to do, all he knew was that standing there with a shitty sword trying to look threatening definitely amused the man.

"You're a lot stronger than than expected if you're still standing," with that, Keigo felt himself only slightly tense as a large explosion of reiatsu blasted his way. Aizen raised an eyebrow this time. "Interesting…"

"Or maybe," _maybe trash-talking a supervillain with god-like powers is not a good idea,_ "you're just not strong enough to bring a teenager to his knees." That… could have been phrased better. Keigo was never good at comebacks. He also had zero tact.

This time, Keigo was rewarded with a small tick against Aizen's mouth he only noticed because of looking at Penta-man for so long. When Aizen moved closer though, Keigo became aware of the fact that he was shaking a little in terror because those eyes; those eyes were dark pits of complet-

"Wah!" Keigo was yanked back into the alley where Afro-dude looked both scared shitless and outstandingly furious.

"The hell do you think you're doing kid? Gimme that," he snatched his zanpaktou back, "and run. I'll try to distract him as long as I can."

Adrenaline rushed through him and this time, Keigo did not hesitate to bolt. What the fuck was he thinking?! Taking on the Big Bad Wolf like that! Keigo was no hero, hell he wasn't even sidekick material and there he was talking shit to Ichigo's biggest enemy of all people!

Ichigo!

 _Ichigo._

"Ichigo!" Keigo ran to the mop of orange hair he'd recognize anywhere, even though it had grown since he'd last seen him. "You're back! We've been wo—"

"Get to safety," Ichigo interrupted him. He sounded different. He looked different. He looked stronger and confident like he had the whole world on his palm and it was his to crush. He looked like a god. "I'll try to take this battle somewhere else but you need to go now. Keigo."

"But—" Mizuiro grabbed his hand.

"Come on."

They hid in Urahara's shop for god-knows how long. Keigo remembered talking to Mizuiro and the rest of the Raizer team safely rescued by Don Kanonji, and the next thing he knew he was asleep again.

* * *

This time he woke up in his room, with his sister banging on his door yelling at him to 'wake the hell up. Mom and dad are waiting for breakfast'.

Which made no sense because Keigo was pretty sure his hometown was about to get destroyed because of a battle between that Aizen douchnozzle and Ich-

Ichigo! What the hell happened to him? Why was Keigo here? Did they win? Did they lose and everyone died and now Keigo was in heaven?

He ran to the living room only to find his mother talking on the phone with glasses perched on her head and a crossword puzzle on her hand, his sister in the kitchen making eggs and toast (since when.) and his father on the couch watching the news.

No hollows, no Aizen, no Ichigo.

Everything was seemingly back to normal.

Keigo had to pinch himself several times and then check the calendar to see if he wasn't transported back in time (hey, at this point, it'd be no surprise). It was September 29th, 6:25 am and the weather was slightly sunny, but it might snow later in the evening.

The last day he recalled was September 23th in Urahara's shop, sitting in stony silence with dread roiling in his gut.

Feeling like a bucket of cold water was dumped on him, Keigo numbly got ready for school, his ears ringing and his brain turning into mush at the thought of everything he had experienced being a dream. He needed to talk to Kisuke. And Tatsuki and Mizuiro and _god_ , Ichigo. Last thing Keigo remembered was meeting the carrot-top in an empty Karakura suburb, so that must mean the rest of them were also back right? It means they won right?

Keigo made it to school without throwing up. Students milled about, chattering like nothing happened over the past week and a half (or was it longer? Keigo had no fucking clue). They all seemed normal, the air around them was light, no negative _reiatsu_ wafting through the grounds and the halls. But these people wouldn't know jack, Keigo needed to find Ichigo and ask him what had conspired in those days.

They were in class, _all_ of them. Ichigo, Chad, Uryu, Orihime _(Oh god she's back she's back thank god-)_ , Tatsuki, Mizuiro and Chiziru, chilling like it was just another boring day at school, worried about homework and missed assignments.

"What the fuck?!" he blurted out, catching their attention, "You guys came back!"

Orihime seemed to be the only one out of the Supernatural Squad to be smiling at him even though Keigo could see it was forced.

"Keigo," Ichigo nodded in acknowledgement before turning to Ishida to continue their conversation. Keigo sputtered indignantly as they all went back to chatting. While he was glad they were back and safe - apart from the bandages covering Ichigo's nose and hands and the plaster over Chad's arm - he really wanted to know what was going on.

With an unexpected surge of anger, Keigo slammed a hand on Ichigo's desk. "What the hell happened? And why the fuck are we acting like it was nothing?!"

The shinigami's mouth thinned and he tensed and he looked. No one else said anything.

"What?" Keigo asked.

"It's done. We won, we're back. That's all," Ichigo snapped annoyed.

"That's it? That's all you're giving me after a month of absence? We know at least parts of that world Ichigo, hell we experienced it. You were there," he stressed and saw Orihime shifted uncomfortably. Keigo would have felt bad for being the source of her discomfort but he was bordering on spectacularly pissed-off at the moment.

"'S none of your business Keigo!" Ichigo barked, "Leave it be."

Keigo scoffed, taking a few steps back. He turned to Tatsuki, "Are you listening to this?"

The latter was stone-faced and refused to make eye-contact with him. "Let it go Asano," she said through gritted teeth.

"I don't believe this. This- this is all we get?! What, we're repressing our feelings now? That's a thing we do, is that it?" Keigo spat, "Last week I was a part of some- some _stupid_ group trying to destroy hollows - which are basically dead people feeding off evil in purgatory - the next thing I know, Karakura's empty as a fucking drum with the king of hollow-land trying to rip my head off with just his spirit pressure and I'm supposed to pretend it never _happened?_ What's wrong with you?!"

Ichigo stood suddenly, grasping Keigo's collar and breathing heavily in simmering rage. Well, he could get angry all he wanted, Keigo wasn't backing down now.

"Shut UP!" he yelled, "I said leave it be, 'that so hard to understand?! It's none of _your damn business!"_

So that's how it was gonna be.

"You know what Ichigo," Keigo snarled, shrugging himself off the shinigami, "Fuck you. And the rest of you too. If you didn't want it to be my business then you shouldn't have dragged me into it in the first fucking place!" With a last glare at Tatsuki, Keigo stormed out the classroom, stormed out of the _damned_ school and made his way to the only place he could get answers.

Urahara shop was closed.

Keigo swore up a storm. "Kisuke can go fuck himself," he seethed and made his way back home.

Keigo wanted to continue being angry. At Ichigo, at Tatsuki, at the world for being so unfair and confusing. But by the time evening settled, he was mentally drained and just really wanted some answers. Yet no one wanted to tell him _anything,_ not even his best friend, who also looked like he was in on the story. Keigo hated the fact that he was the comic relief, that they thought he wouldn't understand because while Keigo wasn't the best at emotions, he knew his boundaries for fuck's sake.

Huffing a sigh, Keigo sat up from bed and began scrolling through the news feed on his phone to see everything he missed out.

Nothing on Karakura, Keigo shouldn't have been surprised. How the soul-reapers managed to hide it though, he would never know.

But all news national _and_ international instead happened to focus on the shitstorm that was the United States of America. Apparently last week, Harlem was destroyed by a green, super-human monster coined the 'Hulk', Iron Man was being targeted again and a city in New Mexico had a small fire-breathing, robotic invasion.

Keigo's eyes widened at the thought that this is what the world had come to. Despite regular people not knowing what was happening in this town, they were being subjected to this version of reality, where supernatural stuff wasn't needed to fuck shit up. Technology was so advanced that the world was just about ready to be destroyed by man-made weapons.

So lost in thought, the brunette almost missed the talk about the clean-up at Puente Antiguo, surrounded by large black vans and trucks that did not have a logo on them, but Keigo had seen some pretty similar vehicles at the Japanese headquarters to know who they belonged to.

Keigo didn't think, maybe in hindsight he should have. He should have slept over it, mulled it over before making a fairly obvious decision. But the teenager was already dialing Fujikawa's number and waiting for the agent to pick up, going with the not-obvious decision, maybe even the wrong one.

Keigo didn't _care._

He wanted answers, and he was going to get them at any cost.

 _"Mr. Asano,"_ Fujikawa's voice sounded tinny through the phone, _"How are you? I did not expect a ca-"_

"You want to know about Hollows," Keigo cut him off, "I can tell you more than that. In return I want something from you."

A pause. Then,

 _"Very well, we can arrange a meeting sometime tomorrow."_ Keigo sighed in relief, _"Should we pick you up after school?"_

"Yeah, be discrete," Keigo could feel the man inwardly scoff. "Oh and Mr. Fujikawa?"

 _"… Yes?"_

"Get rid of the bugs in my house, thanks."

* * *

 **A/N: Hey! So long time no update! That was because this chapter was already posted on AO3 and I'm more active there than here. Updates will continue weekly after this chapter, stay tuned I guess?**

 **-SA**


	6. Chapter 6

"So what you're suggesting is millions of dollars worth of acoustic resonance technology entrusted in the hands of a teenager." Keigo had somehow single-handedly managed to shock Fujikawa into an expression other than neutral disinterest where he supposed the rest of SHIELD could not. In fact, the man did what could be the spy version of pulling one's hair out in frustration: he narrowed his eyes and frowned a little.

"Pretty much," Keigo shrugged. He knew the trade-off sounded ridiculous and largely unfair - a Hollow-zapping gun for Keigo's hardly credible information on the supernatural - but his sister put the seed of a good bargain in his head when he was very young, and they always began with absurd negotiations. Given, these weren't tomatoes by the pound they were talking about, but it was certainly worth a try. Keigo was tired of not being taken seriously.

(He surreptitiously ignored the voice in his head that sounded suspiciously like Arisawa, reminding him that fifteen year-olds aren't meant to be taken seriously).

Mr. Fujikawa said nothing for the next few minutes and Keigo was already considering babbling further in an attempt to reduce his price but just barely held on. It's not like the agent couldn't see him fidgeting in his seat rethinking every decision he's made, but it was the principle of the thing: doing stuff even if it made you uncomfortable was the adult way of living right? If Fujikawa could do it, so could Keigo.

Then again, Keigo couldn't dismember anyone with a paperclip and a death stare.

"Mr Asano," Keigo breathed a sigh of relief at that, "I would be the last person to tell you this, but you must understand our situation. We are kind of in a tough, time-sensitive spot here."

"R-right. With the Hulk and the Fire Transformer thing." The hulk part was a total shot in the dark, but the flicker of surprise that Keigo managed to catch on Fujikawa's face confirmed his suspicions. Damn, he was getting good at this! "Look," and here, Keigo leaned forward solely for dramatic effect. They both knew that SHIELD was only humouring him at this point, but Keigo had held his attention so far, so what's another few mintues?"Neither of us like hollows, and I've spend the last- well- I don't really know how long, but the last of my conscious moments fighting them against my will. We both want them gone without breaking too much sweat or my apartment, so let's do a trade off and be done with it yeah?"

See? Keigo could totally do businessman. He was practically an expert at this point.

The look Fujikawa gave him was another blank mask, and this time Keigo really couldn't figure out what the man was thinking. Keigo morosely concluded that the previous couple of times he could was because the agent purposefully allowed it. Ah, drat.

Finally, Mr Fujikawa settled back, "Okay then. It is possible to trade our tech for your information," Yes! "Let me just contact my boss and make arrangements for your travel, we will leave at dawn." Wait, what? No no no no no.

"Travel?!"

"To the United States, yes. If we must trust you with the Positron-Acoustic Phaser, you will need to be trained for it, and for that to happen you must pass a level of clearance that only the head of our organization can allow." Horror dawned on Keigo's face at the thought of… well… everything: from leaving the country alone to meeting the Big Boss, who would take one look at Keigo and most certainly have him disposed off.

"Wh-what's wrong with staying here?" Keigo tried with a nervous laugh as Fujikawa tapped something on his phone, probably contacting the Head of Spies ohmygod— " Why can't we just train here? I mean Skype exists right?! You can video chat or something!" His voice was shrill by the time Keigo scrambled to piece his situation together.

The look Fujikawa shot him suggested that Keigo was being purposefully dense, which. No he wasn't. He was panicking and this close to giving in. For free.

"Mr Asano," the spy's tone was filled with such contempt, Keigo felt his self-esteem physically plummet and his nervousness skyrocket, "By all means and purposes, you're a civilian, an underage one at that, with little to no training in weapon handling or any form of combat, despite your little stint with the hollows a fortnight ago. If we are to strike a deal, not only will you have to be trained in the United States, where the Phaser was first implemented, but will have to wait until you are 18 to use it. But," with a put-upon sigh, the agent got up, "since this is what your demands are for the information you possess, SHIELD will try its best to make it happen."

"Hey! Wait now!" Keigo exclaimed, "What's the point of a hollow-zapper if I don't get to use it? Why didn't you say anything before?"

"I wasn't aware this is what you wanted before. We're an intelligence organization, not mind-readers." Fujikawa genuinely looked exasperated now; Keigo felt like he should be insulted but his brain was still trying to process brokering a shady-as-all-hell deal with a bunch of spies.

"The US intelligence, you mean."

"We were founded in the US, yes. But our interests lie worldwide."

"Right. Sure." Keigo replied dumbly. Then, "Isn't there something else you can give me instead of shipping me off to Spy Boot Camp?"

Fujikawa brushed invisible pieces of lint off his suit as he leaned against the desk, "We will gladly compensate for your cooperation with funds for both yours and your sister's education," It seemed that was supposed to be the initial deal, judging by how mechanically it was said (or perhaps not mechanically at all. Keigo wouldn't know the difference in Fujikawa's tones would he?)

That… actually sounded fantastic. It's not like Keigo's parents didn't earn enough, they would definitely be able to afford Mizuho's full tuition fee for university if she didn't get in via scholarship. It might be a bit tough for Keigo, since he was neither smart nor studious enough and he wouldn't want to waste his parents' money on something he wasn't even sure he would excel at. SHIELD supporting both of them sounded pretty sweet.

Keigo found himself quite willing to accept the compensation, except for the itch at the back of his head that made him wonder if that would be the end to this… adventure. If Keigo was just going to dump all the info he had on soul reapers and hollows and Ichigo - god Ichigo - to a bunch of strangers for money. It sounded like betrayal of the highest order, and it left an acrid taste on his tongue. Besides, Keigo knew he wasn't the first choice SHIELD had for interrogation - just the easiest.

But the soul-society and anyone associated with it wasn't telling him anything and essentially cutting him out of that life because he'd just get in the way and Keigo needed to know.

If only he could find a way to be enough for them, for Ichigo and Chad and Orihime, to be strong enough that they could trust him with their prob—

Wait.

Keigo took a closer look at Fujikawa and just realized who he was talking to. This guy… he wasn't just a paper-pusher doing some bureaucratic government job. This man… was a goddamn spy who worked with a bunch of other goddamn spies and Keigo had seen first-hand what his people could do. Without superpowers.

"Or…" Keigo began slowly, "You… could train me. Here," he stressed, "and teach me how to protect myself and my friends."

Fujikawa didn't say anything for a few long seconds. Then:

"I'm sorry?"

Keigo, more confident this time, elaborated, "Teach me how to fight like you guys and I'll tell you what you need to know, as long as—" he added hastily, his mind racing, "you tell me what you plan to do with that information. And since I have first hand experience with the hollows and those who kill them on a regular basis, I can help you provide context and advice on your solutions."

This has to be the most Keigo had to bullshit in his entire life.

He was quite proud of himself.

The agent seemed to have processed Keigo's words fairly quickly, "You want SHIELD training and to act as a consultant on any Hollow related business." he repeated.

"Exactly."

"You realize training doesn't happen in a day then? And need I remind you that you are 15 years old? We cannot hire you as a consultant, of all things. That's a job you are fantastically under-qualified for."

Oh.

"Well… kids my age go for Karate and self-defense classes and they're alright! Just think of it as that. As for consultancy— I mean… so many teenagers get internships, what's wrong with this one? I mean except for the whole MI6 vibe and the fact that you could kill me in like, ten seconds. But otherwise it's almost the same." Keigo reasoned and mentally patted himself on the back for said, frankly logical, reasoning.

Fujikawa opened his mouth. Then closed it again.

It was official, Keigo had completely stumped a spy. Yes!

Now it was up to SHIELD and how desperate they were for freshly-dished supernatural scoop.

"That sounds amenable," Fujikawa replied. Fuck yeah! "I will, however, have to consult the rest of our team and let you know tomorrow if we have a deal or not."

"'Kay," Keigo was grinning ear to ear now, pretty sure he won (mostly. Probably. Maybe. You never knew with spies). "Ball's in your court then. I can leave?"

Fujikawa sighed again, and Keigo was pretty sure this one was genuine.

"Very well then."

* * *

"Asano! Hey! Asano!" Chizuru's bright red hair and deafening voice was hard to ignore, still, Keigo found himself barely acknowledging her as he walked along the corridor, feeling jittery and on edge. He was going to hear from SHIELD today and the entire fate of his martial-arts career rested on that one call. Among other things. "Wait up, Keigo!" she called again and this time Keigo turned, baffled that anyone bothered to look for him.

"What's up?" he asked Chizuru, not really in the mood to talk. It was already past lunch time and he was getting antsy. They weren't going to dispose him off after all, right? I mean it sounded like a pretty big organization with actual important stuff than just training some measly teenager, what if they finally had enough and decided it was easier to torture the truth out of him?

"—hang today?" Chizuru was still talking. What?

"Huh?"

"I said, the gang's planning to go to the arcade after school, everyone's coming since it's the weekend, so you wanna come? Tatsuki and Mizui— Oh there he is! Mizuiro! Here!" she waved at a preoccupied Kojima approaching them, typing away on his phone. "I was just telling Keigo about our plans for the arcade!"

"Hm? Oh." Mizuiro looked up from his phone, as if just noticing him and Keigo gritted his teeth, telling himself that it wasn't polite to punch your best-friend in the face. "Hey Mr Asano," the formality should have further angered Keigo, but all he could think of was Fujikawa and his stupid bland suits. Keigo stifled a snort. Instead he nodded in response.

"Sup." It was rhetorical, Keigo didn't expect an answer. Neither did Mizuiro.

"The arcade? Oh yeah, you should come," Kojima said just as disinterestedly as he did with anything involving his best friend.

Best friend my ass. The guy's still pissed at me for yelling at him . Keigo inwardly scoffed. Excuse him for having completely normal, humanreactions.

"No thanks, I'm good." Keigo tone sounded off even to him. He sounded less… whiny, but he didn't have the energy to pretend he cared, not when he was still mad at Kojima. And Ichigo. Always Ichigo.

He was also at wits end because he would either be potentially liaising with a secret intelligence service or having his eyeballs melted and his flesh burned by the same service, but they didn't need to know that.

Keigo's unexpected reaction caught them off-guard. Chizuru immediately tried to diffuse the tension, "Hey now, don't be like that. We haven't hung out together like what… months? It'll be fun!" She playfully punched him on the arm. He was grateful for Chizuru, bless her soul, really; she was just as caught up in this mess of a situation that she was trying to make the best of. Then again, people actually liked Chizuru.

Keigo on the other hand…

"It does sound like fun but… I'm busy today. Can't. Sorry." He tried to sound as apologetic as he could, for the girl's sake, if anything.

Mizuiro on the other hand, had no problem acting like a colossal dick apparently. "Oh? Busy with what exactly?"

"Can't tell you. Stuff at home." Keigo promptly bluffed.

"You always avoid stuff at home, that's why you're always with me," Kojima retorted, mockery lacing his lilting voice. Keigo wanted so badly to hurt—

A text alert from his phone startled him and Keigo shuffled through his bag to unlock his phone. It was a message from a private number.

Contract is ready.  
Car will pick you up after school.

Keigo sighed in visible relief. Holy shit. He was going to be working with SHIELD. Holy shiiiiit.

He was also probably going to crap his pants for the same reason, but there was a place and time to freak out. And school, based on his very very recent experience, was not that.

"Well I've— I've decided to take matters into my own hands so, guess you won't have to worry about me calling you eh?" With a forced chuckle and an equally forceful punch to Kojima's chest, Keigo waved a mock-salute to the duo before heading to class.

* * *

 **A/N:** Heyyyooo. This chapter is basically just me calling myself out on my laziness. No excuses (I mean I was out of the country but NO EXCUSES). Please please, for your sake, re-read chapter 5 in case you forgot what happened. Wouldn't blame you loool. But wait! I'll be posting another chapter today (in a few minutes) so yay double update? I'll post yet another this week and try to post chapters 9  & 10 by the next to make up for my general flaky self.

Just a reminder: I often update first on archiveofourown and then this website so in case I haven't updated here in a while, check it out there and I might have. Enjoy!

-SA


	7. Chapter 7

**A/N:** Guys! I've uploaded a chapter 6 so in case you've lost track of updates, there's a chapter before this thats new! Go read that first!

* * *

 _"— and as much as I want to know what's going on in this city, Agent, too many resources are being wasted on him for something that may or may not be true."_

 _"I understand Agent Fujikawa, but what's happening state-side might as well be Priority Zero in the near future. We've nearly gotten Stark on-board as technical consultant, and that, combined with Dr. Selvig's work on the bridge —_

 _" — which is why you need all hands on deck. Let our team take some load off your shoulders while Project BEAST can take a back-seat. I've tried to do it your way, and he's somehow managed to get more out of us then we have out of him."_

 _"That's interesting, are you sure he's alone in this? From what you've told me, he's the teenager we all wished we were. Not very challenging to impress."_

 _"Oh he's impressed alright, but still cautious. It's quite disconcerting since he's about as subtle as… well Stark was when he was fifteen._

 _"…But he's not like Stark."_

 _"That's not what I meant, no. He's perfectly average, just very loud. The point is, this isn't nearly as important as the new project the WSC sicced us with. BEAST is contained to the Karakura region — Tokyo at most and not a step beyond. It's being managed by Kisuke Urahara's people somehow, and I believe we can discard the theory that it had anything to do with New Mexico."_

 _"…"_

 _"My agents are getting restless, Coulson, and I need to give them something before some Level 3 decides to go snooping again."_

 _"That's exactly why I need them to be preoccupied with this Agent Fujikawa. The project is still infant and word of it cannot go beyond Level 7. If it is within SHIELD's realm of possibility to give the boy what he wants, as long as it's reasonable, he can have it. I know if I was a kid and some spies showed me their tech and fighting skills, I'd be pumped."_

 _"I'm quite sure that's what happened to most of us anyway."_

 _" Play along for now, make him feel special. He'll open up to you sooner than you think."_

 _"Understood, Sir."_

* * *

Fortunately, by some miracle of the universe, SHIELD decided to follow up on their word and had him sign an application form for self-defense training and an NDA that Keigo tried his very best to read through and not fall asleep halfway. In fact, they encouraged (read: intimidated) Keigo to begin his lessons the coming Saturday, where one of their employees was meant to turn Keigo into a total badass.

Unfortunately, the road to total badassery was paved with more blood and pain than Keigo could have imagined in the form of Krav Maga.

Now, Keigo has been on the receiving end on a fair share of Karate moves (Tatsuki) and was quite adept at dodging kendo sticks (Madarame) on several occasions. He knew on an instinctual level that the best way to deal with attacks were to avoid them altogether by getting the fuck outta dodge, which is why Keigo was appropriately confused when his instructor —initially dubbed Mr Mustachio before he insisted Keigo call him Just Bando— told him to stop being a fucking wimp and attack him already.

"But just 10 minutes ago you told me to not engage if I have an option!" the teenager panted as he hid behind one of the punching bags.

"Oh for— the whole point of self-defense is what to do when you don't have an option you idiot!" Bando yelled back, stomping his way towards Keigo and yanking him to the center of the room again. "How the fuck did SHIELD let you get away with this?"

Wow. Rude much? Sure, Keigo's quest on being self-aware manifested only recently, and he learned quite a few things about how not special he was, but having other people say it still stung, no matter how many times his friends had all but shouted it at him. Keigo kinda hoped the hurt in his chest would go away but nope. Still there. And still throbbing like a motherfucker.

Or that could be because of the completely unforeseen slap that Bando laid on it at the start of the session.

"Maybe SHIELD thought I had something worth it." Keigo harrumphed defensively instead.

Bando snorted. "Kid, if they thought that, they would'a assigned you to an agent above level 1."

"Above what now?"

"Oh my God. Forget it, let's start again."

The thing about krav maga was that the style was… well there was no style, as far as Keigo could see. It involved a weirdly large amount of literal face-palming and sure as hell didn't look as cool as Jujutsu did. Hell, even kendo had more technique than this. Krav maga looked like something a guy would do to some poor, homeless man if he lost the money and the kids in a divorce; it was messy and reckless and if Keigo had more balls, he probably would've taken on the school bullies with a poor rendition of it already.

Like the idiot Bando told him he was, Keigo said as much out loud.

Bando eased from his position of way-into-Keigo's-personal-space and sighed. "What we're doin' here kid, ain't some flowery showin' off shit. Now, there'd be a whole load of people tellin' me otherwise, but krav maga ain't art. Every time I've used this was to save my ass from dyin', and I've wanted to do it fast. To get outta that situation. In the end, how you get away doesn't matter as long as you do yeah? SHIELD trusted you to know somethin' about it or else they wouldn'a taken you in."

Keigo looked down, his mind unwillingly going back to facing Aizen, where his body begged him to escape-run-hide because in the end it didn't matter how cool Keigo would have looked if he was dead. He supposed Bando had a point, if we was being attacked Keigo was 96% sure all aforementioned 'flowery showin' off shit' would jump right out of the window and he'd be left helpless and scared. As always.

Keigo sighed, "Fine. I get it, let's do this."

* * *

They finished three hours later, with Keigo internally screaming in pain while outwardly he was only whining. Parts of his body he didn't even know existed were bruised and sore and he was limping sluggishly on his way home (Bando insisted that he walk for extra cool-down, all while smirking like the sadist Keigo was beginning to think he was).

Ichigo was nothing compared to this. At least the carrot-top fucker stopped after one punch. He was starkly reminded of Bando scoffing —his frankly glorious mustache aggressively oscillating to his words— at his stamina after the first hour, which apparently was 'merely feeble for a 15 year old'. Keigo was so (justifiably) immersed in his own agony that he completely missed the figure standing outside his apartment building leaning against the wall and fiddling with his phone. He stopped just short of getting into Kojima's bubble and hastily took a few steps back.

"Um,"

"Keigo. Hey," Mizuiro said, calm as ever but with an air of awkwardness Keigo had rarely seen in him. "…What's up?"

Keigo blinked. He had forgotten about the very existence of his best-friend over the past 48 hours; how, Keigo thought, SHIELD managed to take so much of his time and parts of his… world was astounding.

What was more astounding though, was Keigo's shameful lack of resistance to be whisked away from the people he thought were most important to him.

Struck with that realisation, Keigo let out a shaky exhale and placed his arm at the back of his head sheepishly, Mizuiro's eyes travelling with it,"Well I was— I was uh…"

"What's that?" his friend's gaze narrowed as he pointed towards the limb. Keigo turned to look at the gigantic, fresh bruise that painted his entire tricep. Shit, Mr Mustachio really did a number on him. "I thought it had stopped."

"Um…" Keigo came up blank. Sue him, he was exhausted.

"How long as this been going on?" Mizuiro asked, something akin to agitation lacing his voice, "I didn't think Oshima would have the guts to— after Ichigo—"

"Oh!" It occurred to him that Mizuiro was talking about the bullies and hadn't, in fact, caught up on Keigo's secret liaisons with world intelligence."No no. No. Haha— this wasn't them it was. I'm. Taking self-defense classes."

Well technically it wasn't a lie, he even had the form to prove it.

The tautness in Mizuiro's shoulders reluctantly loosened, "Some self defense class, to give you that." Keigo felt incredibly uncomfortable at his arms being stared at, in the non-sexy way, and scrutinized. Damn, Kojima was always an observant one. Him and Tatsuki. Not to mention the rest of the gang. Of course Keigo decided to force his way into this OP band of steroid-filled superhumans.

"Yeah it was— it was pretty um… tiring. I accidentally took the advanced class and by the time I figured where I was, well—" Keigo awkwardly made jazz-hands before cringing and folding his arms away from prying eyes.

Mizuiro chuckled. Huh, that's new. "Typical," Oh. Yeah. Typical Keigo being typically stupid.

"Yeah."

"So. The we're all planning to go watch a movie tomorrow. Inception, you know, the one with the dreams?"

"…Right." This was weird. Wasn't this weird? Keigo was beginning to feel weird.

He was probably just lightheaded and starving and was therefore coming up with hallucinations of his best friend attempting to invite him to a group activity. There was no way it could be happening in real life —right after Kojima's little tantrum on Thursday where Keigo was too preoccupied to even fully register what Chizuru was suggesting— 'cause if it did, that would be weird.

"…So I'll book a ticket for you then?" Mizuiro asked slowly.

The movie ticket as close to an olive branch as Mizuiro could give, Keigo's lethargic brain read between the lines. And in retrospect, after Keigo's own not-so-little tantrum yelling in front of the whole class, he could admit they were both assholes. Mizuiro more so, but Keigo was no saint. So he really, really should be jumping at the chance of resuming their Magnificent Bromance and saying something along the lines of "Yes! A thousand times yes!" but…

But. His next lesson was tomorrow as well, along with a meeting with a bunch of SHIELD scientists to trade in his information. They knew he was free on weekends. Because he was. Because usually, his friends didn't invite him to the movies and always declined when he initiated any chances to meet up. So.

Keigo had no idea how long he was supposed to even be at the SHIELD office, but he could still cut it short. They'd understand, he thinks, if he said he had to keep up appearances and so couldn't miss the movie. The last thing SHIELD wants is to be the target of suspicion.

Or he could get to the bottom everything the Soul Society wasn't telling him once and for all for the sake of his own peace of mind.

(The fact that he'd turn to a US-based government agency for peace of mind should be quite telling, but Keigo was already betraying his friends a little bit —yes, that's exactly what it was Asano, admit it— so in for penny and all that right?)

Mind made, Keigo gave a forced smile, "Why don't you… why don't you text me the information and I can confirm by tonight?" It was just as much a No as a Yes but not exactly a Maybe so perhaps he didn't sound like a total tool.

"You're busy?" The words were part-disbelief, part-wariness and Keigo forced himself not to get offended. Mizuiro wasn't wrong to assume his friend didn't do much. There was a childhood worth of proof for it.

"I have this class tomorrow as well and um… Mizuho's asked me for some help with something." Keigo fibbed.

Mentioning his sister has always been the perfect excuse to almost anything, since it was no secret how demanding she could get. Keigo would feel bad for overplaying a lot of the things she's said to get away with stuff but it worked damnit (they didn't have to know her other side, the caring, ridiculously overprotective one that Keigo decided to keep all to himself).

"'Kay. See you then," Only Mizuiro could look cool doing a two-fingered salute while walking away, Keigo concluded. He personally looked like a dork. Keigo sighed and trudged up to his flat, where he crashed onto his bed and promptly passed out.


	8. Chapter 8

**A/N: Okay so I just realised I was meant to replace this chapter but totally forgot and so it wasn't consistent with chapter 9 sozzzz. Like I said, I'm rarely on so I tend to forget to update here. If you want more regular updates I'd suggest reading the same story on /works/5602981**

* * *

Keigo obviously couldn't make it to the movies, so to redeem himself from his recently acquired penchant for dickishness he told Mizuiro he'd join them after.

In the mean time, Keigo was stuck in another plain office room with two supposed scientists (possibly assassins, he was beginning to see a pattern here) who were telling him something about the frequency of Hollows and resonance with brain waves that went right over his head.

"No. No, that's not- what hollows are." Keigo interrupted them while nursing his jaw. Bando didn't take it easy on him earlier today either and Keigo figured it might only get worse from here. "They're a lot less… scientific than you'd think."

"That… There's no such thing as 'less scientific' Mr. Asano," Scientist A retorted matter-of-factly, pushing his glasses to his face, kind of reminded him of Ishida. Both junior and senior. "Our technology has worked against them perfectly."

Scientist B nodded along fervently, a mousy woman with big eyes and skittish hands. At least these people expressed their emotional capacity more freely. Keigo shrugged, "That it may, but I don't think you'd be able to explain the rest of it with science, with all due respect." He hurriedly added at the increasingly confused and insulted faces in front of him. "I can show you… um, can I have a pen and paper?"

They handed him his tools with narrowed eyes and he began drawing.

Okay, so after deep introspection at sporadic periods of his free time, Keigo learned that he wasn't good at much, he especially wasn't good at drawing. So he resorted to stick diagrams instead of bunnies which, according to Urahara, Rukia was quite fond of.

"So this is our world," he pointed at center panel containing human stick figures and a car. "And this," he motioned to the left, "Is the hollow world. This is where the hollows live usually. On the other side, he drew a line next to the Human World and made a cloud, "Is something called the Soul Society. You could say this is… kind of like Heaven in this context." When he looked up, Keigo was met by dumbfounded stares.

Keigo sighed.

This was an intelligence agency he was dealing with. Keigo wasn't sounding very intelligent.

After he was done explaining the bare-bones of the Soul Society, here and the hollow world, the scientists scampered away with the paper and left him bored and worn out of his mind for 20 minutes that he spent constantly examining his fresh set of bruises and sore thighs and arms and... the rest of his body. Bando had continued to teach him how to block, which Keigo didn't manage a single time and somehow always ended up on the floor. He felt even more fatigued since Keigo spent the rest of yesterday collecting his thoughts on everything that happened over this month by crying pathetically, alone in his room. It ended with him mentally and emotionally drained but unable to sleep so he did his homework till 4 am before finally crashing.

What a shit year so far. _What a shit fucking year._

He was startled out of his thoughts when the doors opened rather aggressively and Penta-Man strode in with heavy steps. He had an expression on his face, what it was Keigo wouldn't know, but it was progress.

"Mr Asano, you said there are three different worlds with different _beings_ on them who could travel to this city." Hello Keigo, How are you Keigo, Why, I'm great Mr Fujikawa, how are you? No? Okay so this was important then.

"Y-yeah."

"Am I then to assume that these worlds are not in fact, on Earth?"

"Um… I-I don't know? No one told me more than that."

"But where do you _think_ they are?" Penta-man leaned against the table, looking at Keigo intently.

"W-well— I— I didn't give it much thought. They are where they are I g—guess…"

"So you haven't traveled to any of the other places then?"

Keigo blanched just thinking about it, "God no! I would have to like… leave my body on Earth and— c—cause only my spirit would be able to pass through."

"So they're not on Earth?"

"I don't know!" Keigo squealed, hands flying in the air, "I don't know where it's situated… I just drew what was shown to me! They could be…" Keigo sighed, an absurd theory forming in his head. Then again, he was friends with people who dabbled in pseudo-astral projection to fight monsters in their spare time. "Like… different planes of existence? I— I saw the portals through which shinigami come and go and— and even hollows. Different realms maybe?"

Fujikawa sunk on the chair slowly, hands crossed and placed on the table in a way that looked too much like a therapist move. "Yes, I heard you mentioned shinigami. So they're not a myth then." He said it like it wasn't a question, with a quiet resignation as if he had dealt with other mythological creatures before. The thing about the Lochness monster was probably not a joke after all. Keigo wondered if Dracula was real.

"Nah."

"Alright. Death Gods live in the Soul Society where the good souls live, and the bad ones go to the hollow world?"

Keigo shifted in his seat and checked his watch. The movie had already started and would end in a couple of hours. Keigo felt like he'd still be here longer.

"Well, technically they're not really gods. Soul reapers are more apt, I mean sure, they have powers that may seem god-like, but the entire society has a system in place, it's a lot like our system actually… and—and no, the bad souls go to hell. It—its different." As he said this, Keigo realised that perhaps he knew a lot more than he thought. He belatedly recalled the countless nights where Ikkaku and Yumichika grudgingly answered all of his questions with non-answers that made him come to some conclusions. Huh, maybe Keigo should think more. Even though all the thinking he had done over the past few weeks only got him pain and suffering, Keigo felt more… grounded.

"You know what? I'll start again. I still don't know everything, but I think I know enough for now," he said a little calmly. "Can you bring those two scientists in again? They can probably explain some stuff so that I don't sound like a complete lunatic."

Mr Fujikawa nodded and Keigo thought he felt more calm as well, "Of course."

"Right, so. All these 'worlds' are your options for your life after death…"

* * *

The mall was disgustingly crowded for the evening before a workday and thus it should have been nearly impossible for Keigo to find the Supernatural Squad —or at least that's what he told himself as he made his way to the 2nd floor, halfway ready to go back home because he really wasn't in the mood to meet people, especially ones who he didn't seem to have the best relationship with. However, it only took him about 20 seconds to spot the ridiculous tall carrot-topped frown from like, four stores away and Keigo begrudgingly made his way to him.

Ichigo looked up from where he was talking to Orihime and after a flash of surprise that disappeared as soon as it came, nodded at Keigo in acknowledgement. Huh, okay. They were doing this now. The rest of the friend circle turned to look at him with a similar chorus of 'Hey's and 'Sup?'s. Mizuiro and Chizuru however, practically lit up at his arrival. Which. Okay, he can do nice. Keigo's nice. He's _super_ nice.

He waved.

"You came!" Chizuru exclaimed, leaning for a hug that Keigo was _not_ expecting. Riiiiiiight. This was slowly beginning to feel like a prank. While awkwardly hugging her back, Keigo furtively glanced around for any cameras other than the regular CCTVs in the shop, then briefly wondered if SHIELD has access to them. He winked at one of them in case they were watching - might as well have fun right? When Chizuru let go of him, he had to tug the sleeves of his thin jacket over his arms to prevent a repeat of yesterday. He couldn't do much about his jaw but he'll cross that bridge when he gets to it.

No one said anything for a few moments. Then, Ichigo did something Keigo never in his entire life has seen him do: He leaned forward and looked Keigo straight in the eye.

"Listen... Keigo, about that day- we were tired and a- a lotta shit happened and I didn't mean to snap at you- Um. A-and I know I've said some shit to you before that wasn't... good-" Was Ichigo stuttering? Ichigo was stuttering. Keigo sent a bewildered look at the rest of the group who mirrored Ichigo's... remorse. Tatsuki sent him a tight-lipped _smile_ and alright, Keigo was officially in another universe. As much as he'd secretly wanted this, Keigo realised he felt just as uncomfortable with their behaviour as they did; this isn't how their friendship _worked_. Sure, they weren't the touchy-feely type Keigo sometimes wished they would be but if he let Ichigo continue like this, it might just change their dynamic more than it already has. Not to mention, since Rukia was no where to be found, Keigo made a bunch of logical assumptions and figured Ichigo was in a pretty shit headspace then. God knows the guy needs more therapy than all of them _combined_.

Keigo raised his hands in a placating gesture, interrupting Ichigo's little speech that was slowly turning into foot-in-the-mouth syndrome. "Hey! Don't worry about it 'kay? Water under the bridge," he said with as much gusto as his exhausted form allowed him, "I mean, I was a total dick about it too so... we're even. And- I'm sorry too? Like I shouldn't have pried and all, you guys literally just came back from B. A. T. T. L. E. If you know what I mean?"

Ichigo nodded. "It's cool."

"Yeah! Cool..." When no one else spoke, he decided to change the topic, "So... how was the movie?"

"Pretty good," Mizuiro answered, "Kind of trippy though."

"Yeah?"

"Totally, pretty sure I didn't understand at least half of it but it was like a maze. Ha. Get it? Amaze?" Chizuru chortled and Keigo snorted before gingerly taking a seat next between her and Tatsuki. His hiss as he adjusted himself wasn't unnoticed when Tatsuki narrowed her eyes at him.

"What happened? Your face his all messed up." He stuck his tongue out at her.

" _Your_ face is messed up," Tatsuki rolled her eyes. "Self-defense classes."

"Oh? Tired of being the Damsel in Distress always?" That statement should have stung, but Keigo saw her face and noticed a little smile lingering there and figured, might as well own up to that reputation. It'll definitely come in handy if they ever suspect him to be helping SHIELD.

"If I won't be the Damsel then who will?"

"Pfft. Whatever you say, I'm not saving your ass again."

"You love me too much _Arisawa_ ," Keigo cackled at Tatsuki's affronted 'Asano!' and dodged her swatting hand, all while watching the rest slowly learn to heal themselves with carrot cake, iced coffee and each other.

 _We'll be alright,_ thought Keigo.

(Narrator's voice: They were not, in fact, alright.)


	9. Chapter 9

It turns out, Ichigo lost like, all of his powers.

Like, _all of them._

Keigo should feel bad, of course. Ichigo lost everything that helped him save countless lives, shape his character and his morals and become who he is now; making it seem like felt that Ichigo has the right to be _furious_ at having to give away everything to save a town from a supervillain that the Ghost-Government couldn't handle because they were just a bunch of _pri-_

Ichigo had _earned_ those scars, he _deserved_ that win and what did he get in return? Nada.

Which. You know, explained the whole Where-The-Fuck-Is-Rukia siutation perfectly, and Keigo realised that must have been coarse salt on all of Ichigo's wounds.

So. Yikes.

But when Tatsuki told him all of this during lunch break, all Keigo could do was mutter a 'What the fuck' and try very, very, _very_ hard not to burst out laughing.

Now, Keigo's never pretended to be a saint; he was aware enough to know he's kind of a jerk and he definitely doesn't have the best coping mechanisms, so you couldn't really blame him. Besides, he didn't want laugh because it was _funny_ , he- no. That's a lie. It was the funniest thing he had heard in weeks. The moment of dramatic irony hit him so hard that Keigo could have doubled over then and there had it not been for his sore muscles from training.

So when Keigo reached home, he laughed and laughed until he was in stitches. Because while it meant Ichigo now has time to process and heal his long festering wounds, which was awesome, it also meant that Keigo had a mental image of him saying 'Dude, remember the time I lost every part of my secondary identity?' which was hilarious in its own deadpan right. And Keigo wanted to strangle Urahara for letting this happen (because not only was that guy the worst babysitter ever, but Keigo also learned his _whole_ part in the war after pestering Ishida Senior to no end, concluding that he was an _actual_ psycho) just as much as he wanted to grab some popcorn and watch the whole normalcy thing play out because he's still a piece of shit.

He did neither though, and for the first time in his life, Asano Keigo devised a plan.

Since Ichigo was no longer on the Seireitei's (immediate) radar, the past couple of months felt like a closing chapter of a book that he never wanted to read again. It also implied that with all the free time on the Supernatural Squad's hands, Keigo would last less than 10 minutes before they sniff out his sneaky, double-crossing ass and shoot first and probably not even ask questions afterwards. Never mind that Keigo was doing it for them, so that _he_ could learn to help them when the soul reapers inevitably come back to coerce them into laying down on their bellies as a sacrificial bridge, so that _those_ assholes can get to the other side unscathed. Not to mention, having SHIELD know meant that regular people will actually be _warned_ before a building topples over their head for no particular reason; they weren't the bad guys, Keigo knows because despite their methods, he's _seen_ with his own two eyes what their technology can achieve without laying a scratch to anyone. Hell, they protected _him_. You don't just do that if your mission was only to eradicate the 'enemy' or 'zero-eight-whatthefuckever' they classified hollows as.

So, Keigo needed to be careful with his movements, and while he's not smart by any means, he knows how to Google 'spy tactics' and 'how to keep your friends from knowing you're a double-agent' to keep himself afloat (he puts the implications of the word 'double-agent' at the back of his head to ponder upon later, with heaviness in his chest and guilt roiling in his gut).

His plan, called Sneak-Info-To-SHIELD (SITS for short), included creating an alibi for every time he went to SHIELD for "consultation", - which in itself took a good chunk of his time outside school - periodically ask Chad or Uryu about their time in hollow-land as discreetly as possible, and ways to keep the fuck away from Urahara Kisuke because that guy will chase Keigo down at the slightest suspicion - in fact, Keigo wonders why he hasn't already. Maybe he didn't expect Keigo to be ballsy enough to talk to spies. Which is fair, he supposes; _Keigo_ didn't know he was ballsy enough to talk to spies until a month ago so.

Keigo settled for telling the gang he took up a part time job in Tokyo central because he needed the extra cash to buy the new PlayStation or something. It sounded believable enough that they wouldn't come snooping.

Maybe. Hopefully. We'll see.

A fortnight later, SITS was a go and running smoothly. Sure, school was kicking his ass just as much as Bando was in the gym. And the SHIELD scientists were asking him all sorts of questions in the _weird_ territory like "If hollows have no genitalia of sorts, how to they excrete the souls they ingest?" and "If the Soul Society is on a different plane of existence, how do they travel though planes?" and "Have you encountered any time-travel paradoxes as of recently?". To which Keigo surprisingly, _logically_ answered "They don't excrete, they use all the energy given by the soul", "No idea, all I know is: magic portals" and "If I was in a paradox how would I know that I was?" respectively. But total exhaustion aside, Keigo felt mindful of himself for the first time ever.

 _Woah_. He thought stopping in his tracks with Mizuiro bumping into him. _Is this what it feels like to grow up?_

That epiphany was disproved the second Orihime hugged him (what's with all these people and human contact?!) after he got her a prepackaged red-bean cake he stumbled upon on his way to school with no intention other thank thinking maybe she missed these in Hueco Mundo. _Then_ , his first thought was _holyshitboobs_ , which... you know, needed a bit working on. He wasn't even attracted to her, or _anyone_ , at the moment, but if Ichigo's stiffening posture was any indication, Keigo needed to let go. Stat.

"Heeeey," he pulled out of her grasp, "It's no big, Mizuho had an extra one, probably did her a favor." Orihime sent him a dazzling smile and skipped ahead to catch up to the rest.

"Sorry," Keigo mumbled as he fell in step with Ichigo. Ichigo's face turned blank, before he settled for - what Keigo _believes_ might be nonchalance.

"Why? You didn't do anything- It's not like you can't hug her or anything... I mean- _she_ can hug whoever she wants. Why should I care?" he sniffed, turning redder by the second and Keigo looked at him incredulously, "I don't care, _obviously_. Ori- Inoue can- I mean if she wasn't-"

Huh. Keigo never thought he'd see the day his tall-dark-broody friend would feel... things, for anyone. For a while Keigo assumed it was Rukia, and that their arguments were basically a form of foreplay that he'd rather not have witnessed, but apparently not. Still, _clearly_ Ichigo should have known that Orihime was practically in love with him. Anyone with more than two brain cells can see it. At one point Keigo would have even been jealous that Ichigo 'got all the chicks' with his bad-boy image - Keigo actually waited for the feeling to return then, but was surprised when it didn't. In fact, much like everything else with his downgraded-shinigami friend, Keigo only felt like he was finally in on the biggest joke of the universe and the punchline was actually funny.

Of course Ichigo wouldn't know. The guy was all but oblivious about things he didn't really want to see.

Keigo dropped the subject, neither of them needed any more drama, and asked him what how he was doing instead.

"Fine," was Ichigo's short reply, and Keigo would have left it there if he hadn't known how absolutely not-fine his friend was. And he knew they all liked to pretend their brains weren't giant patches of trauma, but Keigo wasn't that guy, no matter how much he'd want to fit in. And he wasn't going to just _watch_ them waste away, despite him being a two-timing infromant bastard.

"I mean obviously you're _not_ okay. The question gets more rhetoric the more I think about it," Keigo shrugged, "I meant how are you dealing? Have you talked to anyone?"

"About what?" Okay, Ichigo was being intentionally obtuse now. Keigo hoped his expression conveyed that. "There's nothing to talk about. We all know what happened."

And listen. Keigo doesn't want to encroach on someone else's lifestyle choices, but watching Ichigo glacially self-destruct is not the best past-time for anyone. So spent the next 10 minutes on a tirade of how he thinks that everything happening to Ichigo is _unfair_ and the Soul Society are kind of _dicks_ for everything they took from him and Ichigo's allowed to feel _bad_ and that 'for fuck's sake we care about you man! Please know that we'd do the same for you if you're in trouble' - after which Keigo immediately felt like a tool for blabbering a bunch of stuff that, in retrospect might just be him projecting.

But just as he was about to apologize for that word-vomit, Ichigo looks at him, shrugs and says:

"Okay."

That stops Keigo short, "Okay?"

"Yeah... I- I'll keep that in mind".

"Huh. Okay, cool. Coolcoolcool. That's nice, so like... therapy? Or- or a hotline! I mean it's anonymous so- Shit. I mean. Do your thing! Haha- yeah." Keigo still feels like an idiot, but the upward twitch on Ichigo's mouth and the roll of his eyes was kinda worth it.

* * *

It was around Christmas when Keigo truly understood what he was doing.

It's like one of those things where you're only able to see the big picture when you've spent time in the picture for long enough. When you've seen how each action sets off a chain of events that you're not unhappy with per say, but left slightly on edge. And by then, it's usually too late.

They were 10 minutes away from finishing training. Bando no longer looked at Keigo with pity, but only mild contempt and possibly a modest dose of esteem at how much he improved over the months. Keigo was still far from being any good at Krav Maga, but so far he had managed to block most of Bando's attacks. He also knew he was still in beginner mode, but when asked, Bando stated, rather disdainfully that Keigo would be able to escape from a mugger unscathed. Which. Positive reinforcement, and all that.

Throughout his lessons Keigo tried his best to get Bando to answer questions about SHIELD with little avail.

"First rule of Fight Club kiddo..." he huffed in reply and kicked Keigo's feet from the ground. That didn't stop Keigo from asking though, and slowly he directed his inquiries towards Bando himself, hoping something about the man might give him a feel of what SHIELD did.

Apparently Bando was a security guard at one of the SHIELD offices, one of which was a part of the U.S Embassy in town. He had a wife who was a caterer and a daughter just entering pre-school. That was the only time Bando let any affection lace his voice. Well, that and when he talked about his recruitment. He seemed grateful to SHIELD for the job, so Keigo figured he had a past he wanted to run away from.

"So SHIELD just street-casts whoever catches their fancy?" Keigo asked casually, hoping to get to know more about the agency.

"Ain't that how you got in?"

"Yeah, that's why I'm asking!" he replied affronted, tried to hide his panic. Keigo initially thought it was common knowledge that he was a degraded informant for supernatural stuff, but he recalled Bando's previous jabs about his business and figured he was need-to-know only. He recalled their earlier conversations when he had just started:

 _"Maybe SHIELD thought I had something worth their time."_

 _"Kid, if they thought that, they would'a assigned you to an agent above level 1."_

It peaked Keigo's curiosity then, but Bando's training was distracting enough for him to forget about it. Whenever he was with the scientists, neither of them mentioned any levels, they only asked Keigo what he knew and spoke scientific gibberish that would forever rattle in his ears like white-noise. A theory formed in his head, and he decided to test it when they were done.

"Soooo... what's their headquarters like? Are there flying cars? Transformers? Ooooh, jet packs?" Keigo hoped he sounded as excited as a teenager should. Judging by the lack of malice in Bando's chuckle, he was warming up to him. Nice.

"Fuck if I know, never been inside, I just got an office in the embassy. The rest of the shit? Way above our pay grade kid. You see that stuff on TV yeah?" Keigo nodded, assuming he was talking about the disaster in Mexico months ago, "Us level one's just kind of instinctively know its SHIELD, but we don't ask, don't tell. Gets us in trouble. So you stay out of it too, I ain't putting my ass on the line for you."

Keigo pouted, ignoring the cogs in his brain filing away that information, "Ah shit, and here I thought I'd be like... a spy-kid." Bando snorted and told him to pack up.

When Keigo arrived at the other office to meet the scientists, a thought nagged at him, made him wonder if what he has seen was just his imagination. Because after the first time he saw the headquarters, with all of that... tech-y stuff, SHIELD held the rest of his meetings in another building, standard looking from both outside and inside, with cubicles and plain offices. Why show him any of their actual tech when even Bando hasn't seen it yet? That didn't even cover the whole level theory he had which seemed quite straightforward: Level 1 was a low level, and anyone who managed to get into the real spy shit was above that. What did that make Keigo?

He decided he needed to be more cautious, more observant. Over the weeks Keigo had established a trust with SHIELD that he now felt was one-sided. They took information from him, threw his mind for a loop explaining what they were doing with it (which, in retrospect, Keigo has no idea about, because scientific jargon was a level of hell he never wanted to visit) and provided him with a trainer for his end of the deal; all parts of a negotiation that they had agreed upon and Keigo grew lax in thinking that SHIELD will handle his problems if he just told them what they were. What he never asked was... how?

There hadn't been any hollow occurrences after the whole Aizen thing, no other spiritual tremors that he or anyone else could detect and Keigo was beginning to lose the point where SHIELD could help the town. He hadn't even asked after the first time. Granted, his new schedule left little brain power to consider these things but... wasn't this about more than just him? Hell it wasn't even for him in the first place! He just wanted to... prove that he was useful!

And in retrospect this feels like terrible a way of doing it!

Shit!

And... okay, he was panicking a little, a trickle of realization that he may have made a deal with the devil (with like, guns) slowly dawning on him and Keigo really, really didn't want to regret this decision. He'll take anything for the feeling in his gut to be proved wrong.

But- but all wasn't lost. Keigo was only giving this thought now because he wasn't so occupied what with the holidays. He could talk Penta-man, re-establish what they were doing here before jumping to any conclusions. Yup, Keigo can do rational. Totally.

He waited for the scientists to finish their line of questioning before changing the subject.

"Hey- um. Is Mr Fujiwaka around? I need to talk to him?" Keigo scratched the back of his neck, wondering how he was going to voice his thoughts now that he'd said that.

Scientist A replied, "I'm sure he can talk to you after, via video chat. He is currently unavailable. Now, I'm assuming hollows are stronger in Hueco Mundo that in-"

"Um- where- where is he?"

Scientist B sighed, and Keigo was grateful for the array of emotions on her face; he hardly got to see those, nowadays. "I'm sorry Mr Asano, that's... classified. But we will relay the message that you wanted to talk to him, alright?" she said, as if talking to a child. Well, she wasn't wrong, Keigo's mental capacity usually didn't exceed an eight year old's, but it was still slightly insulting to be talked at like that.

"Right," he replied instead and looked for alternatives to find more on whatever-the-fuck they were working on. They always provided him with a bunch of stationary and a tablet to write on, and usually collected them in an empty folder. The tablet itself didn't seem like it had anything else of use on it, as far as Keigo could see, and he wasn't going to snoop with the Twiddle-Dee and Twiddle-Dum around.

"Can I... do you have some heavier snacks? I mean I would have got my own but I really didn't get time after... uh- training. I think I'm... low on sugar or something." Keigo put on his saddest, more pitiful pout and rubbed his eyes for good measure. If they were gonna treat him like a kid, might as well play along.

"Sure, we can arrange that?" B looked at A and nodded, "It's almost lunch time anyway, why don't we take a break?" Keigo gave a weak smile and she took off with a phone in her ear.

Keigo decided to pull the classic classroom trick and placed his head down on the table, resting on his folded arms and inadvertently hugging the tablet out of scientist A's eyes. "I'll just be... restin' a bit then," his voice came out muffled and slurred and he hoped against hope that A took his exhaustion for what it was and left him alone. "Wake me up when she gets back?"

He heard A exhale before pushing his chair back and walking to the door, "I can ask my superiors if you can have lunch with us. We all need a change of environment anyway right?" A was trying to make Keigo feel welcome, important. He wasn't very good at hiding it, but Keigo has spent long enough being the target of many favours out of pity to identify that. Hell, his own sister did that sometimes. He nodded but did not lift his head up.

When A left Keigo took a deep breath and, without lifting his head too much, unlocked the tablet.

The screen had it's default wallpaper with the writing and drawing application on the side. He went to the menu to find anything else, but all other applications needed admin permissions. The tab was connected to the Wi-Fi though, even though he wasn't allowed to access the internet and - Keigo found an outlandish idea form in his head that almost brought out bubbles of laughter - although he couldn't edit these settings, he could try seeing what it was connected to.

Keigo clicked on the Wi-fi option and saw that he was connected to a basic router, which he had no doubt was probably masking another connection and looked up the IP address. Keigo prayed to the memory gods to do him a solid just this once and began memorizing all the addresses. He gave up halfway and sat back, eyes readjusting to the light and reached for a pen to write them under his sleeve. Fuck being discreet, if SHIELD wanted to monitor him that closely they would be barging into the room right now.

Less than a minute later, scientist A comes back and asks Keigo to pack up stating "It's been a long week for us, so why don't we continue this next time? You've helped us a lot Mr Asano," and led him to the cafeteria for lunch, which, much to Keigo's chagrin and disappointment, looked like every other office cafeteria he has seen.

* * *

The gang are walking down the evening market downtown on Christmas Eve when Keigo sidles up to Ryo and leans against her. "Walk with me?" he whispers and falls behind, looking at the glass display on the nearest shop.

The thing about Kunieda Ryo is that she may have a whole lot to say about Keigo, but she sees people, observes their complexity and then keeps her mouth shut, because she knows better than to stick her nose where it doesn't belong. That's why every time Ichigo and his band of merry do-gooders disappeared, Ryo kept quite, kept watching, kept observing.

So when Asano Keigo tells her, in the least Keigo fashion, to walk with him, Ryo listens, watches and understands that he needs to speak to her alone. And then goes along with it, no questions asked.

Keigo's hand brushes against hers far too often to be normal, but not nearly enough for her to assume he's being a perv. Not to mention, his gaze barely wavers from their friends walking up front. Sharp. Focused.

Huh.

"How're the holidays treatin' ya?" he asks, voice so low that she has

to strain her ears. She leans closer to hear him, and by the small smirk on his face, that's what he wants. But it's not his complete purpose.

"Good," she replied equally softly, "you?"

He shrugs, "Eh, boring. Nothing too interesting, although I found something I thought you might like."

"Oh?"

"You know computers right?" For some reason Ryo knows exactly what he's asking for. Ryo has dabbled in networks and she's not bad at it, but she never made it beyond ethical hacking. She doesn't want trouble; that doesn't mean she doesn't know those who do...

"A bit," she replies.

At this, Keigo smiles, it's not a smile she has seen on him before, and she knows. She watches. "Good. 'Cause I need a favour." And he slips her this... piece of paper. Upon closer inspection Ryo sees a bunch of digits that are no doubt an IP address, a MAC address and the gateway. Ryo suddenly wants to ask Keigo what the hell he got himself into that he can't look into it himself. It's not that difficult to piggyback someone else's network, she's pretty sure they had a class on this earlier this semester, and she knew Keigo had done it during the lab because Chizuru complained the whole of next day about how her PC at home only played the Llama song every time she turned it on. And Keigo hadn't even bothered hiding his cackles from the other side of the terrace.

"Why can't you do it yourself?" she asks anyway, and looks at him questioningly. Keigo turns to her with a soft smile that makes him look almost... smitten, if not for this... presence in his eyes.

"I'll owe you," he says instead. "What do you want?"

Now, Ryo has made it her mission to conquer high-school with the best grades, best extracurriculars and best behaviour. She has not let any of the crap that Ichigo and Co. (god, that name's sticking, thanks Asano) went through affect her performance and she plans to keep it that way.

But...

But it's not every day a guy like Asano Keigo - of all people - asks for help with something... else. Something different. Something that apparently even the rest of the gang doesn't know about. And hey, maybe it's nothing. Maybe it's just another prank, maybe her computer will play Baby Metal for the rest of the holidays if she does this.

Or maybe, judging by the way Keigo is walking, both tense and sure, eyes flickering around them as if examining something, maybe it's something more.

"I'll think about it," Ryo finally replies, although they both know what she really means.

Keigo leans towards her again, impossibly close and Ryo has to stop herself from stepping back. The gang has turned around and are now watching them with interest, with Chizuru smirking and Tatsuki looking positively murderous. Ryo knows what this looks like - and she turns to see the expression on Keigo's face and realizes that he wants it to look like what it looks like. In what universe would Keigo rather pretend to be interested in someone for a favour?

"Be careful," he whispers and walks away, grinning at Mizuho and blushing in a way she has never seen before, and knows for a fact that it's fake.

Ryo gulps, stuffs the paper in her pocket and hopes that she isn't making a mistake.

* * *

Three days later, Ryo sent him two messages. The first one is a time and place to meet, followed by a "Keigo, what the fuck."

She was already at the cafe when he reached. Her hair, for the first time ever, was unkempt as if she had been running her hands through them continuously.

"That bad?" he asked the second he settled down. Ryo startled slightly and he gave her an apologetic grimace. She sighed and rested her head by the window. "Shit. I'm so sorry, if I knew-"

"No no- don't worry about it," she said, "-it wasn't... bad, per say. Just- really weird." Ryo looked around, eyes trained on the store camera at the corner before scouring through a backpack and pulled out a flash drive, "I- um, I couldn't do it. It just kept rerouting me into this wild goose chase and I didn't want to risk leaving a trails so uh. I asked a friend?" Keigo has never seen her so meek, and then he registered her words.

"A friend? From where? Dude, this could get me into so much trouble!" he hissed. If SHIELD found out... oh man. They might actually, legitimately, for real kill him.

"Well, you didn't tell me what it was all about! I had to ask, Keigo. And-" the waitress interrupted them by bringing two hot cocoas that Keigo assumed Ryo had ordered. He gave a tight smile in thanks, Ryo did the same. "-and this person- these guys. They do stuff like this, so I thought it won't be so hard for them but. But it was, and my - friend - wasn't very happy with the firewalls he had to deal with. He said that- he said he's only had to get through firewalls without his usual subroutines one other time and that was when he tried to hack the CIA. The CIA Keigo!" she whispered frantically. "And he nearly had to burn his computer because he got attacked by a goddamn DoS. What... what did you get yourself into?"

Keigo winced, "Is he alright?" At Ryo's nod he exhaled. Okay, so someone else knows about this. Right. "Do you- did you find anything?"

Ryo nodded and slid him the drive. "A lot of it is corrupted, like I said, my friend didn't really see that coming and now he's mad at me. I mean he mentioned he was technically retired and he doesn't... expose... people anymore- that's why I maintained contact in the first place; he could teach me small stuff and I won't have to worry about getting into trouble 'cause he doesn't do that anymore but- God. Like I said, some of it's apparently corrupted, the other stuff he couldn't make head or tail of, he said its all redacted, Keigo, what the fuck. And... he didn't want to look too much into it. Plausible deniability and all. But man, you owe me big time."

"I know... I'm sorry," Keigo would probably have to spend his pocket money for the next two years making it up to Ryo. "I'd tell you what it's about but-"

"Please don't. I'd rather not have answers when people come asking. I had to root my computer you know, will probably have to buy a new one just in case. And change my internet connection."

"I'll pay for it, promise. In really small installments, but I'll pay for all of that."

Ryo shrugged and gave a tired smile, "I just hope what ever you're doing is... safe. And worth it. And don't ask me to do this ever again."

Keigo made a crossing motion on his chest, "Swear on it. First and last time. Thank you though, for helping me... and for not telling anyone else. Means a lot."

"You're welcome. Now can you please stop those rumors about us dating? It's creepy."

"Next week? It needs to be believable man, I'll just say we kissed and didn't 'feel the spark'."

"Ew! No."

"Okay, I tried to kiss you and you slapped me?"

"...Better."

The data was just as corrupted as Ryo had said. The rest of the files were heavily redacted (holy shit) documents and something like logs on the stuff SHIELD was working on that couldn't be accessed with the software he had on his PoS computer. Keigo spent the rest of the week holed up in his room, dodging calls from SHIELD with the excuse of studying and dates with Ryo, which they bought easily enough. Keigo figured he had given them enough information for another month at least.

And he needed to look for them in the files.

'Hollow' came up with very less, just a line that implied that the 0-8-4 had a name now. Keigo's meetings with the scientists usually focused around the concept of hollows and shinigami, so he hadn't even covered Arrancars or Aizen or... anything of that sort. He tried every keyword he remembered saying during his sessions but none could be found. As a last ditch attempt Keigo tried his own name, followed by Urahara's, to no avail. Almost everything was redacted. SHIELD wasn't fucking around.

Keigo figured he might have to think like an agent. And what they wanted, which was... information on hollows... to stop them from further attacks. To save people. That's what Fujikawa had told him during the first few days.

On a whim Keigo typed in 'phaser' and, much to his surprise, came up with a larger amount of results. There was no indication of the 'positron acoustic' part, but it was more than what he had than before so he took it as a win. Keigo combed through all the documents - and there were a lot; Keigo's never done so much reading in his entire life - to find anything that wasn't a verb, an article or a pronoun, and stumbled upon two things he couldn't find another indication of anywhere else.

 __ _ _ _ _ _ __ __ _ _ _ __ __ _ _ phaser released to Project: BEAST (_ _ _ _ _ __ __ _ _ _ __ __ _ _ _ __ __ _ _ _ _) accelerating _ _ _ by Dr. __ __ _ _ _ __ __ _ _ _ __ __ positing [Einsterin-Rosen] (see: Project:_ __ _ _ _ __ __ _ __ __ ) dated, __ __ _ _ _ __

Okay. Project BEAST. Einstein-Rosen, phaser. He could work with that.

BEAST came up with nothing on google, although if Keigo was in-charge of the Department of Acronyms, he would probably call the project that dealt on hollows just that, especially if it came with a cool mnemonic. Keigo knew that the PAP was just as hopeless a search on the internet. Einstein-Rosen though.

That came up with wormholes.

So clearly, Keigo was out of his depth.

Unless...

Okay, no.

But maybe?

Okay so... Keigo's tried his hand at high-school physics and learned that it's something he never ever wants to do again. He doesn't get it, there are too many equations and the symbols were a calligraphic nightmare. Keigo has barely an understanding of the science behind a hydraulic pump much less spacetime bullshit.

But Keigo's also a giant geek. He's seen Donnie Darko and Star-Wars (including the prequels, which he actually likes) and read sci-fi theories; hell, his entire life in an annoying sci-fi movie, so he knows the general gist of a goddamn wormhole.

Which promptly made Keigo jump to some rather obvious but terrifying Worst Case Scenarios in which SHIELD would combine his knowledge on other worlds, an evil-repelling gun and the concept of gold medal went to SHIELD wanting to create a wormhole to Hueco Mundo and pewpewpew-ing hollow ass with their PAP. And now they might be even capable of doing so since that they have a backstabbing informer on their side. The runner up alternatives somehow, were just worse adaptations of the same theory.

But Keigo has trusted SHIELD for months now, surely he should have looked for other reasons as to why else SHIELD want his information. They told him they were protecting people, and at most would scale the PAP into something larger to use as a Hollow Bug Spray or something. And maybe that's all they're doing! Because why would they document the phaser and research on wormholes together?

Yeah, no.

Unfortunately, the answer was glaringly obvious and Keigo then tried and failed really really hard to not think about SHIELD making contact with hollows by forcing open a portal to Aizen's den because dear God it sounded like an infinitely bad idea.

It also sounded exactly like something an intelligence agency would do.

By the time Keigo came down from the horrifying realisations of SHIELD's potential but most-probable intentions (and something that feels a lot like a panic attack should), he was rocking back and forth on his bed at 2am on New Year's day thinking about how he colossally screwed up and if SHIELD found out that he knew, he'd be well and truly fucked.

Kisuke would be super useful right about now.

* * *

 **A/N: Hi my dudes. Sorry for the late update, this was already uploaded on AO3 since i dont access this website anymore. So if you're curious, check out this story on [ /works/5602981] for future updates in case I forget to do so here. toodles 3**


	10. Chapter 10

**A/N: This is the final chapter for this fic! The sequel is already up and called Line. Check it out! :D**

* * *

This wasn't the first time someone tried to breach SHIELD's firewalls. Hell, from what Agent Fujikawa had heard, Tony Stark's AI made it a hobby to constantly hack into their main servers in the US for the past few months (which meant that Stark has been privy to their information for years if they just found out about it). No, the issue was that their Japanese headquarters have never been on anyone's radar unless SHIELD wanted them to be. They were one of the smaller branches, with their own rules and forms of training which made them different, but equally competent employees. The drawback of being on the relative back-burner of the World Security Council (and Fujikawa couldn't fathom how that was possible, what with Japan's GDP slowly but steadily eating USA's for dinner, not to mention their shared history in World War II) was that Japan was one of the late recipients of SHIELD's funding, which meant a lot of their tech was homegrown fresh from - well... Fujikawa Industries.

And that meant that their infrastructure was not nearly as robust as their US counterparts, despite essentially being US intelligence themselves no matter what propaganda the WSC fed them. So although they were open to more cyber-attacks, it didn't mean that these things actually happened. You see, the best defense their HQ has was pretending to not exist more-so than other countries. Their collaboration with the US embassies' highest ranks in Japan (who also, coincidentally were the Japanese government's top officials) ensured that any and all actions were on behalf of the government.

So, all in all, Agent Fujikawa believed that it was quite a solid alibi for anyone who came sniffing.

Except... except this attack was not only unprecedented, but somehow both successful and incredibly messy. Judging by what IT had to say about it, it was hasty and not at all subtle, almost as if the perpetrator had no idea what they were stepping into. They made an equally shabby retreat with a DOS malware as a parting gift that would prevent them from accessing anything with an internet connection for a long time. That is not to say that SHIELD managed to find out who it was, however based on the emails exchanged with SHIELD US, rumours about new hacker communities attempting to infiltrate them were rising. Still, the worst part about the situation was that their uninvited guest had to access their local files and may now know that BEAST was not a public sector job.

Agent Fujikawa ran a hand through his hair in the confines of his office, trying not to look as frazzled as he felt. This was bad, really really bad if Fury came to learn of their... minor oversight. Project BEAST was already on a precipice, with barely enough evidence to acknowledge its true impact on whatever their director has planned, but this event might shut their research down for good, and he was not going to see all of their hard work go down the drain just because Fury was not interested in Karakura's physics-defying anamolies.

They needed to make contact fast, and Fujikawa knew that Asano Keigo will be of no use for this.

Time to cut him loose.

* * *

Kisuke picked up on the third ring, "This is Urahara's shop, the store for your soul! How may-"

"Kisuke, oh thank god. I need help and I'm coming over."

"Is this... Keigo? Ichigo doesn't come here anymore,"

"I know. I... oh god I fucked up. I fucked up so bad. I am coming over so keep the basement open? Thanks."

Keigo reached the shop exactly fifteen minutes later, panting and jittery and fervently rapping his knuckles on the door until it slid open. Kisuke stepped out in his usual striped glory and Keigo has never been more relieved to see him.

"Asano Keigo! To what do I owe uh-" he side-stepped, confused, as Keigo pushed his way in and to the house part of the store. Keigo went to the room he recalled was Abarai Renji's for a time and began shucking off his clothes to change into new ones. Keigo hasn't been in contact with SHIELD for well over a week now, but he didn't want to risk saying anything just because he was awful at frisking bugs out of himself. He then went back to where he believed was the entrance Kisuke's underground training area and impatiently waited for it to open up. Kisuke followed him slowly.

"Um, what do you think you're doing?" he asked not rudely, because no one's better at rolling with the punches than a powerful, disgraced shinigami, but Keigo think's he about to jump out of his skin if the door to the basement isn't open yesterday.

"I'll explain but we need to go under. Pretty please."

Kisuke relented, leading them to the vast field below the shop. Nothing had really changed since Keigo's last time here, when him and his friends had to hide until the whole Aizen fiasco died down. They settled by one of the giants rocks so that Keigo was sidled to a corner between two of them to give him a view of most of the room. He began biting his cuticles, lost at where to start. Keigo only hoped that Kisuke didn't kick him out and feed him to SHIELD himself.

"So..." the shinigami began, "I suspect this is not about your blooming love-life with Kuneida Ryo I've been hearing about."

That startled a laugh out of him; he had completely forgot about that tidbit. "Nope, much worse. God, so much worse."

"What's wrong with Ryo? She's a pretty girl, not as pretty as Ms. Inoue-" he had that weird perverted twinkle in his eye that told Keigo that he's only joking, mostly to keep up the facade of being nothing more than a shop owner. Keigo hated to be the one to put a damper on that.

"It isn't about my love-life, which doesn't exist actually. And that's because I fucked up. You can't tell anyone, not even Ichigo. And especially not the Soul Society or I'm dead."

The glint disappeared just as Keigo said it, and Kisuke frowned, immediately suspicious and on guard. When he didn't say anything, Keigo gulped through the giant lump in his throat and willed his hyperventilating heart to settle.

"Right. Um... fast and dirty version: SHIELD wants to open a portal to Hueco Mundo." he blurted and braced himself for a reaction.

The suspicion on Urahara's face immediately drained to a blank stare that, frankly terrified the teenager more because now Keigo had no idea what he was thinking. The shinigami didn't say anything, only stared and it took all of Keigo's willpower to not keep rambling. The stifling silence continued for who knows how long before Urahra brought his cane to his lap.

Then, in the most casual voice ever, he asked, "And how do you know this?"

He was inevitably going to question him about this, Keigo knew that and no matter how much he had dreaded this conversation, desperation and the clinging need of someone having his back for once led him to confess his ultimate fuck up. Keigo had geared himself to come clean before he made the phone call, so he didn't know why he was taken aback when Kisuke asked him anyway.

Still, Keigo gathered as much courage as his tiny, fragile body and said, "Because I told them how." Then, because Keigo actually felt bad he added, "...Sorry?"

Urahara was angry, Keigo knew the instant he fessed up. Not because Keigo was especially good at reading people - no matter what he thought when training, he still had a shit-ton to learn and thinking that he was even mildly badass was just an act of arrogance - but because the next words out of Kisuke's mouth were a whispered "Shibari, Benihime," which turned out to be his swo-zanpaktou releasing some form of a deep red net wrapping itself all over Keigo's body - just an inch away from his skin, which told him a lot about what would happen if he touched it - in the form of some creepy bondage ribbon.

He was pale with fear of what was to come, mentally beating himself up for thinking he'd be rewarded after coming clean about how he put an entire civilization of non-humans in danger. Fucking shit, Keigo, he thought, you entitled piece of trash. Keigo was now confined between a literal rock and a hard place, cornered like prey and trapped in a web of spirit energy that would most likely burn his flesh if he breathed hard enough.

"I'll be honest," Kisuke began in that casual tone of his that usually preceded damage that couldn't be repaired, "I didn't expect them to come for you, out of everyone. Ms. Arisawa maybe, even your friend, Mizuiro. But never you. Perhaps-" at this he chuckled, dark and dangerous, "-perhaps that's why I thought they gave up. My mistake, obviously. And now I have to go and clean your mess."

The shinigami crouched down and looked at Keigo in the eye, making him uncomfortable. His self-esteem had taken enough blows these past months to fully absorb Kisuke's words, but Keigo still felt guilt rise at the back of his throat threatening to choke him. And Keigo didn't want to know what Urahara meant by 'cleaning his mess', despite knowing that shinigami didn't hurt human- no. Wait. He didn't know that. Soul reapers have never killed humans, as far as he remembered, but there were other ways to hurt them. They had hurt him and his friends, left scars that nobody but they could see. Keigo wouldn't want that to happen to anyone else, even if his mistrust in SHIELD only grew, no one deserves to be treated the way they were.

With a deep sigh, Keigo closed his eyes and wondered whether he could just disappear for one second if he wished hard enough.

"What were you thinking?" Keigo's eyes blinked open to see Kisuke looking at him less like he wanted to throttle him, maybe like he was both curious and doubtful. "Why did you tell them about us? You know the repercussions of the living knowing about us would be dire. It would put your friends in danger, so why?"

Keigo shrugged, the answer had sat in his stomach for so long, he only felt relieved when he said it aloud, "Because I wanted to help."

"Help who? Yourself? If you wanted to help, Keigo, you should have come to us." Maybe Kisuke was trying to genuinely understand where he was coming from, but in that moment all Keigo could hear was condescension and pity. And knowing him... it probably was.

In that moment Keigo didn't know if he hated SHIELD more or Shinigami.

Both, his mind supplied, you can always hate both.

Keigo straightened his shoulders, not caring if they grazed the net, his face set in stone. He was going to fix this, whether Kisuke helped or not. And really, he didn't care if he hit below the belt, Keigo tended to be vicious when he was angry, he didn't know where it came from, but he recalled his dad having a similar temperament. "I came to you, once. Many months ago, and you told me that you will deal with it. Well, guess what genius? SHIELD still got to me because you and your Soul Society aren't as competent as you think you are," he punctuated his words, watching the shinigami's face lose its considerate demeanor and settle for a tiny frown. Good. "I went to them because they didn't fuck with my mind and take away my memories without my consent, just because it suited their agenda. Because they promised to protect the city without having to use teenagers as scapegoats and collateral damage, only to abandon them when they were of no use.

"You think you know more? Just because you've lived- or- died longer? Because you're centuries older than us? News Flash! Our mortality actually makes us decent people instead of cynical, arrogant abusers like you. You don't get to shit on my mistakes when your people have lost lives for theirs. So maybe, for once, instead of trying to erase your problems away by brainwashing a trigger-happy organisation of spies, you should let me go and deal with them if you don't wanna help, like a mature fucking adult."

Keigo was panting by the time he was done, the red in his vision slowly fading despite his anger still simmering under the surface. He knew that if Urahara even tried to twist his words Keigo would physically fight the bonds holding him and reach for his goddamn neck. A tiny voice at the back of his head reminded him that he should probably reserve some anger for SHIELD, that a lot of his rage was misplaced because this was the second time he had been shunned by someone who he thought he could trust. Keigo reminded that voice that he had enough fury for both of them and then for himself so it can kindly fuck off.

"You're angry," said Kisuke, leaning back and looking contemplative.

Keigo scoffed, "No shit."

"You don't trust us," he added.

"Were you even listening?"

"You don't trust them either."

"No, but frankly, they will still be more useful to me at this point."

"What do you plan to do?"

"I was thinking you'd have the answer, but clearly, I overestimated your abilities. Now untie me so that I can fix this mess," Keigo snapped.

The bonds vanished in an instant and Keigo exhaled heavily, rubbing his arms and standing up. He cleaned the dust off his pants as Urahara waited patiently. "I can help you. If you tell me everything you told them."

"That's fair. Got a computer 'round here?"

Kisuke sighed, "I'll bring it down."

In less than five minutes, Keigo has the files from SHIELD on display to the shinigami, explaining what all of the redacted documents meant based on what he knew of the organization. "The only things I told them about were the existence of Shinigami and Hollows. I never told them about my friends, or any other species. They were more interested in inter-dimensional travel. I'm guessing something happened before that involving realms and portals and they want to travel to Hueco Mundo using the- uh. Einstein bridge or something... basically wormholes."

"And they're sure they can get to Hueco Mundo?"

"No clue. But they know more than they did before, and since they already have the PAP - uh... positron acoustic phaser, which is basically a hollow zapping machine - I think they might have some knowledge on the frequency they function on? SHIELD hasn't... contacted me in over a week, I had told them I was busy 'dating', but they didn't even bother checking in on me like they tend to do. I think they're ghosting me."

Kisuke rubbed his chin in thought and Keigo turned back to the files, eyes flicking towards anything he might have missed before. In all honesty, he just wanted to huddle in a corner and forget any of this happening, feeling horrifyingly tempted to ask Urahara to take away his memories but Keigo preferred having his agency intact.

"There's a chance they have enough information to actually deploy their studies and make contact, and have concluded that you're no longer of use."

Keigo nodded in assent even though inside he wanted to groan and scream and throw a tantrum because of course he was expendable. Was it so hard to get some goddamn respect around here?

"Then I've got to make sure I'm not the liability here," he replied instead. There will be time for crying, later in his room with a stuffed animal from his childhood, "What are the odds that SHIELD will get through?"

"It can range from anywhere between reasonably high to absolutely zero. If I was in their place, your data would be more than enough for me to create a stable portal not just to our realms, but any other as well. To be fair my technology is far more advanced so..."

"And... what will happen if they get there? Make contact?" asked Keigo, "Will they survive?"

"First of all, we're assuming they want to go to Hueco Mundo, but they're equally likely to go to the Seireitei, with everything you've given them. Secondly, they depend on the frequency of the hollows, meaning that not all of them can see it, and aren't as spiritually aware as you or your friends. They also underestimate how many hollows might be there, and they don't know anything of the rest of the Menos, only the small fry that occasionally penetrate Karakura, so I'll give them 10 seconds before they're toast.

"Lastly... human bodies physically cannot survive the atmospheres of our worlds, they need only the souls to pass through, and I doubt they know how to do that. Either way, it's a suicide mission." Kisuke concluded, hands deliberately tapping on his cane.

Well, shit.

This was bad.

"And all of this assuming they are able to stabilize a portal. Which, if done wrong could cause a singularity that will absorb everything in its way, obviously." Urahara added because he was a asshole and now Keigo was genuinely frightened.

The teenager blew a raspberry and rocked back and forth, wondering how he lost control of everything so fast. Then he remembered that he wasn't big shit and never had anything together in the first place.

Okay.

Problem-solving first.

Crying into a pillow later.

"Okay, okay. I'm gonna convince them to stop this... and if you have a plan, now's the time to say it." Kisuke opened his mouth, "If you don't have a plan without memory-wiping, then save it."

"I am capable of reason, Keigo."

"Yeah? Let's hear it then."

* * *

Fujikawa's plan to dismiss Asano Keigo was simply to disappear on him, hide SHIELD the way they did before they had approached him. The teenager would eventually give up if all of their offices and the gym were suddenly occupied by a call center and table-tennis classes. They all did. If it came to it, Fujikawa fully planned to use the especially concentrated dose of Ambien to cloud his memories - it was one they had used on plenty of targets to know that the long-term effects were minimal, courtesy of R&D.

His priority was to find the culprit of the breach and reinforce their firewalls, followed by starting the simulations for BEAST and signing R&D off for using the particle accelerator. They still had months before they could even stabilize the bridge - still a drastic improvement from the initial years, due to a certain Dr. Selvig's notes - but in the mean time the agent needed to recontact Urahara Kisuke for a more lucrative deal than before. Although the kid had been a decent substitute for the shop-owner, SHIELD needed an expert's opinion and Urahara fit the bill. In retrospect, it wasn't hard to conclude that the man might be a shinigami, just like Asano had described.

He was working to the bone for the past week, drawing contracts and negotiating with DC-HQ, so he didn't block his number from his informant, but only redirected them to a voicemail that logged his messages in case the boy provided something that could be of use to them.

He was suddenly sent an alert from said log that was labelled as an SOS from Asano Keigo. The call was from his mobile phone that sent a distress signal that he had told the kid to use only once and only in an emergency.

Fujikawa sighed and rubbed his temples. The kid might be throwing a tantrum for all he knew, having been ignored for days. He liked attention, a lot, much to the agent's chagrin.

Still, he pulled up the location and saw that Asano was in his home. Except there were two anomalies in frequencies around him, circling the apartment and slowly getting closer to the boy.

Shit.

The kid couldn't go one day without getting attacked.

Fujikawa quickly grabbed his gun, the phaser and dressed himself in a vest before calling two other agents to meet him at the hangar. The jet they used was not the fastest one, championed by the newest line of quinjets by both Fujikawa Industries and SI, but it was the smallest one with the first generation of cloaking technology that wouldn't draw too much attention. Their last encounter with the hollow in the jet left too many unanswered questions that the government had no choice but to begrudgingly deal with, followed by a lengthy and detailed report on Invisible Intelligence Operations and the consequences against them on the agent's desk the next morning.

Tokyo HQ was still learning, but the emergency presented to him by a fifteen year old child suggested they needed to learn faster.

The agent did not spend any time thinking the state Asano Keigo would be in by the time they got there - ETA being 6 minutes, he requested backup immediately to maintain a perimeter of the attack - as he strapped himself in and they took off. He did not let the small (not that small) chill of panic overcome him at the thought of a teenager (their teenage- no, stop) being ravaged by two hollows in his own home. Fujikawa knew better than that, he'd been doing this job for years now, and he's been always prepared for the possibility of collateral in a high-stress situation.

He just didn't expect the collateral to be that kid.

It was an oversight that the agent would later berate himself for, as it was completely expected given the fact that the boy was not only their only source of information on spiritual monsters but also a magnet attracting them to the city. There should have been precautions, a spirit dampner perhaps, something SHIELD started working on a fortnight ago that was later pushed to the back-burner when Coulson called and promptly led everything to shit. Either way, the agent could not fathom why the idea of the kid getting hurt left him shaken and panicked.

He had always considered him a nuisance, a valuable pool of resources - yes - but a nuisance nonetheless. He had ensured the rest of SHIELD treated him that way too, a preventive measure to stop him from poking his nose where it didn't belong all while keeping him safe from what they dealt with on a daily basis. It didn't make sense for Keigo to get under his skin and have him multi-task between firing instructions to the two agents, keeping an eye on the targets and keeping his heart from bursting from his chest at the thought of the kid lying under a pile of rubble.

Fujikawa wasn't compromised, so he couldn't understand why he was acting like he was.

Maybe because this was a child they were dealing with. Children were always a touchy subject for agents.

Maybe the kid got under his skin after all.

He has met a lot of Asano Keigos in his life, yet, at the same time, he's never quite met someone like Asano Keigo.

Compartmentalizing his thoughts as fast as he could, Agent Fujikawa entered the perimeter around Keigo's apartment and found no evidence of Hollows or the destruction that usually followed them. Frowning, he asked one of the agents to re-scan the area and turn on infrared. The two dots of anomalies remained, matching Hollow patterns but not... doing anything except circling the building. Odd. The kid had mentioned that not everyone could see them, but they didn't have to, the phaser and scanner took care of that, all they needed was to reverse the polarity of a frequency akin to IR to produce a general shape, which was enough for termination.

These could be Hollows they had not encountered before, or something else unidentified from Hueco Mundo, although the lack of hostility made him pause. As far as they new, Hueco Mundo was completely hostile territory, Asano Keigo made sure everyone knew that nothing good came out from there. Which was all well and good, seeing as SHIELD wasn't planning to touch that realm any time soon.

"Sir, scans show normal behaviour among the residents of the building," an agent supplied. Fujikawa leaned across the screen and saw no distressing behaviour as well. All the red dots seemed to be doing routinely mundane things. No sign of a ringing emergency alarm. No stampedes. Nothing. His gaze tracked the Asanos' flat and found it empty save for two figures. One of them was undoubtedly Keigo, the agent could make out that posture from a mile away, lying on possibly a couch. The second...

"Preparing for landing," the agent supplied and Fujikawa got his weapons ready, shoulders tense and eyebrows furrowed in suspicion.

The jet landed by the closest secluded corner and remained cloaked as the agents quickly got off. They jogged to Asano's apartment complex as quietly as possible and slowly made their way to his floor. Outside other doors, Fujikawa could clearly hear chatter from this kid's neighbours, seemingly normal and ever-present. There was no noise coming from Keigo's apartment though; it was eerily quiet, almost as if there was no one there. The blinds remained shut, and apart from the heat signatures, there was no indication that anyone was home.

What the hell was going on here?

Fujikawa's eyes remained trained on the second heat signature. It was a figure with no particular shape, just an obscure... blob over the kid. Was possession possible among hollows? Fujikawa was feeling especially trigger happy, so even though he wanted Keigo to be safe, he simply needed one excuse to blast off whatever was hurting the kid.

On his command, one of the agents carefully unlocked the door with a device and pushed it open.

They had a direct line of sigh on Keigo, who was lying on the couch with his eyes closed, seemingly unconscious.

Shit.

Fujikawa stalked towards the boy while the other agents swept through the rest of the house. He checked the kid's pulse; slow staccato in an irregular rhythm. He was alive. Fujikawa hung his head in relief. He was alive. He needed to call medical, call backup to recheck the perimeter and immediately extract Asano from this-

"I was wondering if you would even show up."

Never in the last decade has anyone gotten the better over the agent. Fujikawa turned immediately, gun and phaser raised and pointed towards none other than-

"Urahara Kisuke."

"The one and only," The man chuckled. He wore his usual garb, with a cane held protectively on the side that Fujikawa immediately deduced was his zanpaktou. Perhaps calling a couple of tanks may have been a good idea.

"You did this?" He asked instead, standing over the boy. The rest of the agents quickly joined him, all aiming their weapons at the shinigami.

Urahara shrugged. "He was acting suspicious," Fujikawa swallowed the urge to ask what kind of a man Urahara was, drugging a child, but thought better of it. He was here on behalf on SHIELD; they weren't the most clean-cut people either.

"A phone call would have sufficed," he replied.

"No, I like this better," The shinigami said, deliberately casual. "Learned a lot about you though, so I thought it would be nice to have a chat."

"You have me."

Urahara raised an eyebrow and briefly glanced at the agents around him. Agent Fujikawa wanted to preface by saying that he did not want to do this. He did not. He motioned the other agents to scram, and to take the boy with them. God knows what Urahara had done to him.

The shinigami walked around him and sprawled across the sofa. Fujikawa knew that every move he made was done with thought and purpose. It was a matter of knowing what the purpose was. "Let's talk then."

* * *

When Keigo woke up to a bright, white ceiling, he first thought he had died and gone to heaven. Then he realised that he probably wouldn't go to heaven. Then he realised that heaven was the Soul Society and did not look like this.

His next thought was that SHIELD figured him out and had placed him in some fucked-up torture chamber. That would explain the cotton in his brain and the feeling of a dead animal in his mouth. He looked around and concluded that he was in a hospital, but wasn't attached to anything so far, so whatever happened did not injure him.

He tried recollecting his previous memories, remembering Urahara's plan to get SHIELD off his back and wondered if it was a success.

The door opened to reveal Penta-Man in all his suit-and-tie glory and confirmed his suspicions.

"Mr Asano," he said in that bland way of his. "You've been out a while."

Keigo smoothed his expression into something more subtle than 'I-Know-What-You-Did-Four-Hours-Ago'. "W'happened?" He settled for confused.

"A hollow attack of some sort. Led to a bit of memory loss. But don't worry, it will come back to you soon. If not, SHIELD can fill you up on the details." The agent sat down on the chair next to him and opened the folder he had been holding. "In the mean time, I would like to talk to you about joining the SHIELD academy."

Wait.

What.

This was not a part of the deal. Urahara has specifically told him that he would ensure SHIELD never interfered with him again; that he would liase with them himself. What the fuck did those two talk about while he was out?

"Um,"

"It is currently situated in the United States, however, we are planning to branch out internationally to train people like yourselves to be able to work with jobs like ours." Penta-Man pulled out a couple of - are those brochures? SHIELD had brochures? - and forms. "We would like you to be among the first batch of candidates in Japan."

What the fuck.

"Um," Keigo repeated intelligently. There had to be a misunderstanding. Did Urahara know about this? Keigo was so gonna have words with that guy. "I- I don't understand. Why m-me? Why now?"

Penta-Man looked down, somewhat guiltily. Which. No, Keigo had to be imagining that. He wasn't nearly as good at reading people as he thought, so Keigo was just making shit up. Penta-man did not look guilty. He didn't look much like anything, most days.

"We had a breach, recently, in our systems." Keigo gulped, "A minor one, but it was enough to raise concerns about what we were doing as an organization. It was decided that we needed you - as you'd put it - step up our game and initiate contact with people to gain their trust. Create strong allies, and maintain the ones we have. We cannot do that without fresh faces. You seem like a viable candidate."

Bullshit. Keigo wanted to snap, but he kept his mouth shut and thought about it for a while.

Clearly he couldn't say yes to this, he needed to be with his friends, for fuck's sake. That was the whole point of these past ridiculous months anyway. Not to mention, he was a pretty... bad candidate for spy school, if he was being completely honest. He screwed over far too many people in too little time to be considered 'viable'.

"I'm sorry but... I can't- uh. I can't join you. I can't leave my friends and everything I know just for this." Keigo said, and tried to act as remorseful as possible. It wasn't hard, he genuinely felt like shit for turning them down - what with wanting to feel like a badass all the time. But Keigo already knew that SHIELD just wanted one hand on the steering wheel if he joined them. He'd still be expendable, but he'd at least get bragging rights.

Penta-man was about to protest, or say something else entirely - Keigo wouldn't know with that guy, but he cut him off, "Listen... it's not- it's. Look. You... cut me off a while back right? Don't lie to me about it, I know you were ghosting me. And- and maybe that's 'cause you got what you wanted or whatever. And decided that I'm useless and I get that. You're spies, you're supposed to be aloof and shit. But there's nothing else I got to offer you man. I'm sorry."

Fujikawa nodded, looked down again. Keigo was beginning to wonder if it was some kind of tell. Like hell it was. Spy, remember? his mind reminded him.

"That's fair, Mr Asano. We still have to fulfill our end of the bargain though, and your training will be ready to resume whenever you feel well enough-"

"Hey, no. I'm... I'm not doing that anymore. It's. Um. It's fine, really. You don't need to-"

"Keigo," Keigo stopped blabbing, "We want you to get better at self-defense, and we want you to be at SHIELD. You will be an asset to our organization," Fujikawa had the gall to look almost earnest and that's when Keigo realised what the fuck was going on.

"I know what you're doing," Keigo interrupted.

"I'm sorry?"

"This is the most textbook spy-shit I've seen anyone at SHIELD do. Which clearly means it's stuff you're not supposed to do."

"I don't understand Mr Asano. Care to elaborate?" Fujikawa was blank again, but he had shown his hand already. Deliberately. Keigo had no clue what the fuck he was trying to achieve here.

"I don't know what happened during the time I was out," That wasn't a total lie. Techinically, Keigo didn't know 'cause he was unconscious, "But you suddenly giving a shit about me after a week of nothing? Calling me by my first fucking name? Get out. And take your shit with you." Keigo snapped. He needed to have words with Urahara for letting Penta-man pull this shit with him.

"Mr Asano-"

"Look, clearly this is a test of some sort for something I don't give a rat's ass about anymore. I'm done, okay? Unless it's the end of the world, you can handle running an organization without a teenager by your side."

"...Very well. Thank you for your co-operation so far. You will be compensated."

"I don't want your compensation," Keigo shot back. Then, "Think of it as a favour." He's seen The Godfather, he knew what was up.

This time when Fujikawa narrowed his eyes - and it was barely visible, mind you - Keigo believed that to be genuine. "You're currently at SHIELD medical, and free to go any time. One of our staff members will escort you out."

Keigo needed to call Kisuke once he got out. Immediately.

...He also needed to called Ryo to put up with him for a while longer.

* * *

 _"Did he pass?"_

 _"I'd like to say with flying colours, but he has always been a little all over the place."_

 _"That's fair, they always are, at first. When is he starting?"_

 _"...He isn't."_

 _"Excuse me?"_

 _"He said he wanted out, and to count what he did for us as a favour."_

 _"A favour."_

 _"Yes."_

 _"..."_

 _"...Sir?"_

 _"Are you telling me he played you, Agent?"_

 _"I'm working on it."_

 _"He's fifteen."_

 _"Yes, sir."_

 _"You said he isn't like Stark."_

 _"He isn't. Not like that."_

 _"Apparently in other ways then. You need to get him before someone else decides to. He's already on the radar."_

 _"I will, Sir."_

 _"Especially do it before he starts collecting. I can't imagine anything good coming out of that."_

 _"Yes, Sir."_

* * *

 **A/N: So... I'm an idiot. I posted the first chapter of the sequel of this story like, this morning and forgot that I hadnt uploaded the last chapter of this one. Apologies! Line is the sequel to this story and the series is called Agent 147. I'll make the changes accordingly. Also, the reason I forgot is because Im more active of . So please, if youre still interested in this story, go to that place first. I'm LeGrange there. Thank y'all for reading and see you at the sequel :)**


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